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YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS 



" The air is full of their voices. Their books are the 
•world's holiday and playground, and into these 
neither care, nor the dun, nor despondency can follow 
the enfranchised man." — Dreamthorp. 





^u^ ^ C^^^ 



YESTERDAYS WITH 
AUTHORS 



BY 



JAMES T. FIELDS 

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAITS 
AUTOGRAPH LETTERS, ETC. 



Was it not yesterday we spoke together ? — Shakespeare. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1900 



70922 



i 'VV^ ( unit Ktft^ED 

; my 5 1900 



I saVN!) copy, 

0«'''vtii?«< to 

ORDLJ^ DIVISION, 
■NOy 16 190Q 



f^^^ 






COPYRIGHT, 1871, BY JAMES T. FIELDS 

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY ANNIE FIELDS 

COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Jnetviitli 

TO MY FELLOW-MEMBERS 
OF THE SATURDAY CLUB 



CONTENTS. 



Pack 

I. Introductory 1 

II. Thackeray 11 

III. Hawthorns 39 

lY. Dickens 125 

V. Wordsworth 251 

VI. Miss Mitford 261 

VII. " Barry Cornwall " and some of his Friends . 353 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 



James T. Fields. From a photograph by Mrs. Cameron 

Frontispiece 

Alexander Pope 4 

Facsimile of Letter from John Rtjskin .... 8 

William Makepeace Thackeray 24 

Dr. John Brown 34 

Robert Burns 43 

Facsimile of Letter prom Nathaniel Hawthorne . 53 
Thomas De Quincey. From a portrait in the National 

Portrait Gallery by Sir J. Watson Gordon ... 76 

Leigh Hunt. Engraved by H. Wright Smith ... 80 

TiCKNOR, Fields, and Hawthorne 96 

Facsimile of Letter from Henry D. Thoreau . .110 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. From a photograph . . . 120 
Cornelius C. Felton. From a photograph loaned by Miss 

Louisa C. Felton 130 

Facsimile op Letter prom Washington Allston . 146 

Charles Dickens 156 

Charles Dickens, his Wipe, and her Sister, Georgina 

Hogarth. After a drawing by Maclise in 1843 . . 176 

Facsimile op Letter prom Charles Dickens . . . 184 

Henry W. Longfellow. Engraved by J. J. Wilcox . 193 

Keep op Rochester Castle. From photograph . . 318 

Gadshill from the Rear, Dickens's Home . , . 338 

William Wordsworth. Engraved by Stuart . . . 354 

Rydal Mount, Wordsworth's Home .... 358 

Mary R. Mitpord 266 



vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Walter Savage Landob. From painting by Dance . 273 

Robert Browning. From photograph .... 288 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 314 

James Russell Lowell. From photograph . . . 332 

Facsimile op Letter prom James Russell Lowell . 344 
Charles and Mary Lamb. After portraits by Francis 

Stevens Gary in the National Portrait Gallery . . . 358 

B. W. Procter ("Barry Cornwall"). Engraved by Stuart 362 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. From a drawing by Field 

Talfourd in the National Portrait Gallery . . 368 

Anna Jameson 376 

Facsimile op the Last Page op a Letter prom Leigh 

Hunt 382 

Samuel Rogers 390 

John Forster 396 

Facsimile op the Original Poem by B. W. Procter 

("Barry Cornwall") 412 

Facsimile op Letter from Mrs. Procter .416 

The originals of these illustrations, excepting those noted, are 
from the hbrary of Mrs. James T. Fields. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



'■'■Some there are. 
By their good works exalted, lofty minds 
And meditative, authors of delight 
And happiness, which to the end of time 
Will live, and spread, and kindle.'''' 

WORDSWORTH, 



INTEODUCTORY. 

SURROUNDED by the portraits of those I have long 
counted my friends, I like to chat with the people 
about me concerning these pictures, my companions on 
the wall, and the men and women they represent. These 
are my assembled guests, who dropped in years ago and 
stayed with me, without the form of invitation or demand 
on my time or thought They are my eloquent silent 
partners for life, and I trust they will dwell here as long 
as I do. Some of them I have known intimately ; several 
of them lived in other times ; but they are all my friends 
and associates in a certain sense. 

To converse with them and of them — 

" When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
I summon up remembrance of things past " — 

is one of the delights of existence, and I am never tired 
of answering questions about them, or gossiping of my 
own free will as to their every-day life and manners. 

If I were to call the little collection in this diminutive 
house a Gallery of Pictures, in the usual sense of that title, 
many would smile and remind me of what Foote said with 
his characteristic sharpness of David Garrick, when he 
joined his brother Peter in the wine trade : " Davy lived 
with three quarts of vinegar in the cellar, calling himself 
a wine merchant." 

My friends have often heard me in my " garrulous old 
age " discourse of things past and gone, and know what 



4 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

they bring down on their heads when they request me 
" to run over," as they call it, the faces looking out upon 
us from these plain unvarnished frames. 

Let us begin, then, with the little man of Twickenham, 
for that is his portrait which hangs over the front fire- 
place. An original portrait of Alexander Pope I certainly 
never expected to possess, and I must relate how I came 
by it. Only a year ago I was strolling in my vagabond 
way up and down the London streets, and dropped in to 
see an old picture-shop, — kept by a man so thoroughly 
instructed in his calling that it is always a pleasure to 
talk with him and examine his collection of valuables, 
albeit his treasures are of such preciousness as to make 
the humble purse of a commoner seem to shrink into a 
still smaller compass from sheer inability to respond when 
prices are named. At No. 6 Pall Mall one is apt to find 
Mr. Graves "clipp'd round about" by first-rate canvas. 
When I dropped in upon him that summer morning he 
had just returned from the sale of the Marquis of Has- 
tings's effects. The Marquis, it will be remembered, went 
■wTong, and his debts swallowed up everything. It was a 
wretched stormy day when the pictures were sold, and Mr. 
Graves secured, at very moderate prices, five original por- 
traits. All the paintings had suffered more or less decay, 
and some of them, with their frames, had fallen to the 
floor. One of the best preserved pictures inherited by 
the late Marquis was a portrait of Pope, painted from life 
by Piichardson for the Earl of Burlington, and even that 
had been allowed to drop out of its oaken frame. Horace 
'Walpole says, Jonathan Eichardson was undoubtedly one 
of the best painters of a head that had appeared in Eng- 
land. He was pupil of the celebrated Piley, the mastex 
of Hudson, of whom Sir Joshua took lessons in his art^ 
and it was Richardson's "Treatise on Painting" which 




/A 



y^t- 



INTRODUCTORY. 5 

inflamed the mind of young Eeynolds, and stimulated his 
ambition to become a great painter. Pope seems to have 
had a real affection for Eichardson, and probably sat to 
him for this picture some time during the year 1732. In 
Pope's correspondence there is a letter addressed to the 
painter making an engagement with him for a several 
days' sitting, and it is quite probable that the portrait 
before us was finished at that time. One can imagine 
the painter and the poet chatting together day after day, 
in presence of that canvas. During the same year Pope's 
mother died, at the great age of ninety-three ; and on 
the evening of June 10th, while she lay dead in the house, 
Pope sent off the following heart-touching letter from 
Twickenham to his friend the painter : — 

" As you know you and I mutually desire to see one another, I 
hoped that this day our wishes would have met, and brought you 
hither. And this for the very reason which possibly might hinder 
your coming, that my poor mother is dead. I thank God, her death 
was as easy as her life was innocent ; and as it cost her not a groan, 
or even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an expression 
of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure, that it is even amiable to be- 
hold it. It would afford the finest image of a saint expired that ever 
painting drew ; and it would be the greatest obligation which even 
that obliging art could ever bestow on a friend, if you could come and 
sketch it for me. I am sure, if there be no very prevalent obstacle, 
you will leave any common business to do this ; and I hope to see 
you this evening, as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as early, 
before this winter flower is faded. I will defer her interment till to- 
morrow night. I know you love me, or I could not have written 
this ; I could not (at this time) have written at aU. Adieu ! May 
you die as happily! " 

Several eminent artists of that day painted the likeness 
of Pope, and among them Sir Godfrey Kneller and Jervas, 
but I like the expression of this one by Eichardson best 
of all. The mouth, it will be observed, is very sensitive 
and the eyes almost painfully so. It is told of the poet, 
that when he was a boy " there was great sweetness in his 



6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

look," and that his face was plump and pretty, and that 
he had a very fresh complexion. Continual study ruined 
his constitution and changed his form, it is said. Eichard- 
son has skilfully kept out of sight the poor little decrepit 
jBgure, and gives us only the beautiful head of a man of 
genius. I scarcely know a face on canvas that expresses 
the poetical sense in a higher degree than this one. The 
likeness must be perfect, and I can imagine the delight of 
the Eev. Joseph Spence hobbling into his presence on the 
4th of September, 1735, after "a ragged boy of an ostler 
came in with a little scrap of paper not half an inch broad, 
which contained the following words : ' Mr. Pope would be 
very glad to see Mr. Spence at the Cross Inn just now, '" 

English literature is full of eulogistic mention of Pope. 
Thackeray is one of the last great authors who has spoken 
golden words about the poet. " Let us always take into 
account," he says, " that constant tenderness and fidelity 
of affection which pervaded and sanctified his life." 

What pluck and dauntless courage possessed the " gallant 
little cripple " of Twickenham ! When all the dunces of 
England were aiming their poisonous barbs at him, he 
said, " I had rather die at once, than live in fear of those 
rascals." A vast deal that has been written about him is 
untrue. No author has been more elaborately slandered 
on principle, or more studiously abused through envy. 
Smarting dullards went about for years, with an ever- 
ready microscope, hunting for flaws in his character that 
might be injuriously exposed ; but to-day his defamers 
are in bad repute. Excellence in a fellow-mortal is to 
many men worse than death ; and great suffering fell upon 
a host of mediocre writers when Pope uplifted liis sceptre 
and sat supreme above them aU. 

Pope's latest champion is John Rusldn. Open his Lec- 
tures on Art, recently delivered before the University of 
Oxford, and read passage number seventy. Let us read it 



INTRODUCTORY. 7 

together, as we sit here in the presence of the sensitive 
poet. 

" I want you to think over the relation of expression to character 
in two great masters of the absolute art of language, Virgil and 
Pope. You are perhaps surprised at the last named ; and indeed 
you have in English much higher grasp and melody of language 
from more passionate minds, but you have nothing else, in its range, 
so perfect. I name, therefore, these two men, because they are the 
two most accomplished artists, merely as such, whom I know, in 
literature ; and because I think you will be afterwards interested in 
investigating how the infinite grace in the words of the one, the 
severity in those of the other, and the precision in those of both, 
arise wholly out of the moral elements of their minds, — out of the 
deep tenderness in Virgil which enabled him to write the stories of 
Nisus and Lausus, and the serene and just benevolence which 
placed Pope, in his theology, two centuries in advance of his time, 
and enabled him to sum the law of noble life in two lines which, 
so far as I know, are the most complete, the most concise, and 
the most lofty expression of moral temper existing in English 
words : — 

' Never elated, while one man 's oppressed ; 
Never dejected, while another 's blessed.' 

I wish you also to remember these lines of Pope, and to make your- 
selves entirely masters of his system of ethics ; because, putting 
Shakespeare aside as rather the world's than ours, I hold Pope to 
be the most perfect representative we have, since Chaucer, of the 
true English mind ; and I think the Dunciad is the most absolutely 
chiselled and monumental work ' exacted ' in our country. You 
will find, as you study Pope, that he has expressed for you, in the 
strictest language and within the briefest limits, every law of art, 
of criticism, of economy, of policy, and, finally, of a benevolence, 
humble, rational, and resigned, contented with its allotted share of 
life, and trusting the problem of its salvation to Him in whose hands 
lies that of the universe." 

Glance up at the tender eyes of the poet, who seems 
to have been eagerly listening while we have been reading 
Euskin's beautiful tribute. As he is so intent upon us, 
let me gratify still further the honest pride of " the little 
nightingale," as they used to call him when he was a 



8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

child, and read to you from the " Causeries du Lundi " 
what that wise French critic, Sainte-Beuve, has written 
of his favorite English poet : — 

" The natural history of Pope is very simple : delicate persons, it 
has been said, are unhappy, and he was doubly delicate, delicate of 
mind, delicate and infirm of body ; he was doubly irritable. But 
what grace, what taste, what swiftness to feel, what justness and 
perfection in expressing his feeling ! . . . . His first masters were 
insignificant; he educated himself : at twelve years old he learned 
Latin and Greek together, and almost without a master ; at fifteen 
he resolved to go to London, in order to learn French and Italian 
there, by reading the authors. His family, retired from trade, and 
Catholic, Uved at this time upon an estate in the forest of Windsor. 
This desire of his was considered as an odd caprice, for his health 
from that time hardly permitted him to move about. He persisted, 
and accomplished his project ; he learned nearly everything thus by 
himself, making his own choice among authors, getting the grammar 
quite alone, and his pleasure was to translate into verse the finest 
passages he met with among the Latin and Greek poets. When he 
was about sixteen years old, he said, his taste was formed as much 

as it was later If such a tiling as literary temperament 

exist, it never discovered itself in a manner more clearly defined 
and more decided than with Pope. Men ordinarily become classic 
by means of the fact and discipline of education; he was so by 
vocation, so to speak, and by a natural originality. At the same 
time with the poets, he read the best among the critics, and pre- 
pared himself to speak after them. 

" Pope had the characteristic sign of literary natures, the faithful 

worship of genius He said one day to a friend : * I have 

always been particularly struck with this passage of Homer where 
he represents to us Priam transported with grief for the loss of 
Hector, on the point of breaking out into reproaches and invectives 
against the servants who surrounded him and against his sons. It 
would be impossible for me to read this passage without weeping 
over the disasters of the unfortunate old king.' And then he took 
the book, and tried to read aloud the passage, ' Go, wretches, curse 
of my Ufe,' but he was interrupted by tears. 

" No example could prove to us better than his to what degree 
the faculty of tender, sensitive criticism is an active faculty. Wa 



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INTRODUCTORY. 9 

neither feel nor perceive in this way when there is nothing to 
give in return. This taste, this sensibility, so swift and alert, 
justly supposes imagination behind it. It is said that SheDey, the 
first time he heard the poem of ' Christabel ' recited, at a certain 
magnificent and terrible passage, took fi-ight and suddenly fainted. 
The whole poem of * Alastor ' was to be foreseen in that fainting. 
Pope, not less sensitive in his way, could not read through that 
passage of the Iliad without bursting into tears. To be a critic to 
that degree, is to be a poet." 

Thanks, eloquent and judicious scholar, so lately gone 
from the world of letters ! A love of what is best in art 
was the habit of Sainte-Beuve's life, and so he too will 
be remembered as one who has kept the best company in 
literature, — a man who cheerfully did homage to genius, 
wherever and whenever it might be found. 

I intend to leave as a legacy to a dear friend of mine 
an old faded book, which I hope he will always prize as 
it deserves. It is a well-worn, well-read volume, of no 
value whatever as an edition, — but it helonged to Abra- 
ham Lincoln. It is his copy of " The Poetical Works of 
Alexander Pope, Esq., to which is prefixed the life of the 
author by Dr. Johnson." It bears the imprint on the 
title-page of J. J. Woodward, Philadelphia, and was pub- 
lished in 1839. Our President wrote his own name in it, 
and chronicles the fact that it was presented to him " by 
his friend IST. W. Edwards." In January, 1861, Mr. Lin- 
coln gave the book to a very dear friend of his, who 
honored me with it in January, 1867, as a New- Year's 
present. As long as I live it will remain among my 
books, specially treasured as having been owned and read 
by one of the noblest and most sorely tried of men, a 
hero comparable with any of Plutarch's, — 

" The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

I* 



THACKERAY. 



What Emerson has said in his fine subtle way of Shakespeare may well 
be applied to the author of " Vanity Fair.''' 

" One can discern in his ample pictures "what forms and humanities 
pleased him ; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful 
giving. 

" He read the hearts of men and women, their probity, and their second 
thought, and wiles ; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which 
virtues and vices slide into their contraries." 



It 

THACKERAY. 

DEAR old Thackeray ! — as everybody who knew him 
intimately calls him, now he is gone. That is his 
face, looking out upon us, next to Pope's. What a contrast 
in bodily appearance those two English men of genius 
present! Thackeray's great burly figure, broad-chested, 
and ample as the day, seems to overshadow and quite 
blot out of existence the author of " The Essay on Man." 
But what friends they would have been had they lived 
as contemporaries under Queen Anne or Queen Victoria ! 
One can imagine the author of " Pendennis " gently lift- 
ing poor little Alexander out of his " chariot " into the club, 
and revelling in talk with him all night long. Pope's 
high-bred and gentlemanly manner, combined with his ex- 
traordinary sensibility and dread of ridicule, would have 
modified Thackeray's usual gigantic fun and sometimes 
boisterous sarcasm into a rich and strange adaptability to 
his little guest. We can imagine them talking together 
now, with even a nobler wisdom and ampler charity than 
were ever vouchsafed to them when they were busy amid 
the turmoils of their crowded literary lives. 

As a reader and lover of all that Thackeray has written 
and published, as well as a personal friend, I will relate 
briefly something of his literary habits as I can recall 
them. It is now nearly twenty years since I first saw 
him and came to know him familiarly in London. I was 
very much ia earnest to have him come to America, and 



14 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

read his series of lectures on " The English Humorists of 
the Eighteenth Century," and when I talked the matter 
over with some of his friends at the little Garrick Club, 
they all said he could never be induced to leave London 
long enough for such an expedition. Next morning, 
after this talk at the Garrick, the elderly damsel of 
all work announced to me, as I was taking breakfast at 
my lodgings, that Mr. Sackville had called to see me, and 
was then waiting below. Very soon I heard a heavy 
tread on the stairs, and then entered a tall, white-haired 
stranger, who held out his hand, bowed profoundly^ and 
with a most comical expression announced himself as 
Mr. Sackville. Eecognizing at once the face from pub- 
lished portraits, I knew that my visitor was none other 
than Thackeray himself, who, having heard the servant 
give the wrong name, determined to assume it on this 
occasion. For years afterwards, when he would drop in 
unexpectedly, both at home and abroad, he delighted to 
call himself Mr. Sackville, imtil a certain IVIilesian waiter 
at the Tremont House addressed him as Mr. Tha.ckuary, 
when he adopted that name in preference to the other. 

Questions are frequently asked as to the habits of 
thought and composition of authors one has happened to 
know, as if an author's friends were commonly invited 
to observe the growth of works he was by and by to 
launch from the press. It is not customary for the doors 
of the writer's work-shop to be thrown open, and for this 
reason it is all the more interesting to notice, when it is 
possible, how an essay, a history, a novel, or a poem is 
conceived, grows up, and is corrected for publication. One 
would like very much to be informed how Shakespeare 
put together the scenes of Hamlet or Macbeth, whether 
the subtile thought accumulated easily on the page before 
him, or whether he struggled for it with anxiety and 
distrust. We know that Milton troubled himself about 



THACKERAY. 15 

little matters of punctuation, and obliged the printer 
to take special note of Ms requirements, scolding him 
roundly when he neglected his instructions. We also 
know that Melanchthon was ih his library hard at work 
by two or three o'clock in the morning both in summer 
and winter, and that Sir "William Jones began his studies 
with the dawn. 

The most popular female writer of America, whose 
great novel struck a chord of universal sympathy through- 
out the civilized world, has habits of composition pecu- 
liarly her own, and unlike those belom-ing to any author 
of whom we have record. She croons, so to speak, over 
her writings, and it makes very little difference to her 
whether there is a crowd of people about her or whether 
she is alone during the composition of her books. " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin " was whoUy prepared for the press in a 
little wooden house in Maine, from week to week, while 
the story was coming out in a Washington newspaper. 
Most of it was written by the evening lamj), on a pine 
table, about which the children of the family were 
gathered together conning their various lessons for the 
next day. Amid the busy hum of earnest voices, con- 
stantly asking questions of the mother, intent on her world- 
renowned task, Mrs. Stowe wove together those thrilling 
chapters which were destined to find readers in so many 
languages throughout the globe. No work of similar im- 
portance, so far as we know, was ever written amid so 
much that seemed hostile to literary composition. 

I had the opportunity, both in England and America, 
of observing the literary habits of Thackeray, and it 
always seemed to me that he did his work with compar- 
ative ease, but was somewhat influenced by a custom of 
procrastination. Nearly all his stories were written in 
monthly instalments for magazines, with the press at his 
heels. He told me that when he began a novel he rarely 



i6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

knew how many people were to figure in it, and, to use 
his own words, he was always very shaky about their 
moral conduct. He said that sometimes, especially if he 
had been dining late and did not feel in remarkably good- 
humor next morning, he was inclined to make his char- 
acters villanously wicked ; but if he rose serene with an 
unclouded brain, there was no end to the lovely actions 
he was willing to make his men and women perform. 
"When he had written a passage that pleased him very 
much he could not resist clapping on his hat and rushing 
forth to find an acquaintance to whom he might instantly 
read his successful composition. Gilbert Wakefield, uni- 
versally acknowledged to have been the best Greek scholar 
of his time, said he would have turned out a much better 
one, if he had begun earlier to study that language ; but 
unfortunately he did not begin tiU he was fifteen years 
of age. Thackeray, in quoting to me this saying of 
Wakefield, remarked : " My English would have been 
very much better if I had read Fielding before I was 
ten." This observation was a valuable hint, on the part 
of Thackeray, as to whom he considered his master in art. 

James Hannay paid Thackeray a beautiful compliment 
when he said : " If he had had his choice he would rather 
have been famous as an artist than as a writer ; but it was 
destined that he should paint in colors which will never 
crack and never need restoration." Thackeray's characters 
are, indeed, not so much inventions as existences, and we 
know them as we know our best friends or our most 
intimate enemies. 

When I was asked, the other day, which of his books I 
like best, I gave the old answer to a similar question. 
" The last one I read" If I could possess only one of 
his works, I think I should choose "Henry Esmond." 
To my thinking, it is a marvel in literature, and I have 
read it oftener than any of the other works. Perhaps the 



THACKERAY. 



17 



reason of my partiality lies somewhat in this little inci- 
dent. One day, in the snowy winter of 1852, I met 
Tliackeray sturdily ploughing his way down Beacon Street 
with a copy of " Henry Esmond '" (the English edition, 
then just issued) under his arm. Seeing me some way off, 
he held aloft the volumes and began to shout in great glee. 
When I came up to him he cried out, " Here is the veiy 
best I can do, and I am carrying it to Prescott as a re- 
ward of merit for having given me my first dinner in 
America, I stand by this book, and am willing to leave 
it, when I go, as my card." 

As he wrote from month to month, and liked to put 
off the inevitable chapters till the last moment, he was 
often in great tribulation. I happened to be one of a 
large company whom he had invited to a six-o'clock dinner 
at Greenwich one summer afternoon, several years ago. We 
were all to go down from London, assemble in a particular 
room at the hotel, where he was to meet us at six o'clock, 
slmrp. Accordingly we took steamer and gathered our- 
selves together in the reception-room at the appointed 
time. When the clock struck six, our host had not ful- 
filled his part of the contract. His burly figure was yet 
wanting among the company assembled. As the guests 
were nearly all strangers to each other, and as there was 
no one present to introduce us, a profound silence fell 
upon the room, and we anxiously looked out of the win- 
dows, hoping every moment that Thackeray would arrive. 
This untoward state of things went on for one hour, still 
no Thackeray and no dinner. English reticence would 
not allow any remark as to the absence of our host. 
Everybody felt serious and a gloom fell upon the as- 
sembled party. Still no Thackeray. The landlord, the 
butler, and the waiters rushed in and out the room, 
shrieking for the master of the feast, who as yet had not 
arrived. It was confidentially whispered by a fat gentle- 



i8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

man, with a hungry look, that the dinner was utterly 
spoiled twenty minutes ago, when we heard a merry shout 
in the entry and Thackeray bounced into the room. He 
had not changed his morning dress, and ink was still 
visible upon his fingers. Clapping his hands and pirouet- 
ting briskly on one leg, he cried out, " Thank Heaven, the 
last sheet of The Virginians has just gone to the printer." 
He made no apology for his late appearance, introduced 
nobody, shook hands heartily with everybody, and begged 
us all to be seated as quickly as possible. His exquisite 
delight at completing his book swept away every other 
feeling, and we all shared his pleasure, albeit the dinner 
was overdone throughout. 

The most finished and elegant of all lechirers, Thackeray 
often made a very poor appearance when he attempted to 
deliver a set speech to a public assembly. He frequently 
broke down after the first two or three sentences. He 
prepared what he intended to say with great exactness, 
and his favorite delusion was that he was about to aston- 
ish everybody with a remarkable effort. It never dis- 
turbed him that he commonly made a woful failure when 
he attempted speech-making, but he sat down with such 
cool serenity if he found that he could not recall what he 
wished to say, that his audience could not help joining 
in and smiling with him when he came to a stand-still. 
Once he asked me to travel with him from London to 
Manchester to hear a great speech he was going to make 
at the founding of the Free Library Institution in that city. 
All the way down he was discoursing of certain effects 
he intended to produce on the Manchester dons by his 
eloquent appeals to their pockets. This passage was to 
have great influence with the rich merchants, this one 
with the clergy, and so on. He said that although Dick- 
ens and Bulwer and Sir James Stephen, all eloquent 
speakers, were to precede him, he intended to beat each 



THACKERAY. 19 

of them on this special occasion. He insisted that I 
should be seated directly in front of him, so that I should 
have the full force of his magic eloquence. The occasion 
was a most brilliant one ; tickets had been in demand at 
unheard-of prices several weeks before the day appointed ; 
the great hall, then opened for the first time to the public, 
was filled by an audience such as is seldom convened, 
even in England. The three speeches which came before 
Thackeray was called upon were admirably suited to the 
occasion, and most eloquently spoken. Sir John Potter, 
who presided, then rose, and after some complimentary 
all'visions to the author of " Vanity Fair," introduced him 
to the crowd, who welcomed him with ringing plaudits. 
As he rose, he gave me a half- wink from under his spec- 
tacles, as if to say: "Now for it; the others have done 
very weU, but I wiU show 'em a grace beyond the reach 
of their art." He began in a clear and charming manner, 
and was absolutely perfect for three minutes. In the 
middle of a most earnest and elaborate sentence he sud- 
denly stopped, gave a look of comic despair at the ceiling, 
crammed both hands into his trousers' pockets, and delib- 
erately sat down. Everybody seemed to understand that 
it was one of Thackeray's unfinished speeches and there 
were no signs of surprise or discontent among his audi- 
ence. He continued to sit on the platform in a perfectly 
composed manner; and when the meeting was over he 
said to me, without a sign of discomfiture, " My boy, you 
have my profoundest sympathy ; this day you have acci- 
dentally missed hearing one of the finest speeclies ever 
composed for delivery by a great British orator." And I 
never heard liim mention the subject again. 

Thackeray rarely took any exercise, thus living in 
striking contrast to the other celebrated novelist of our 
time, who was remarkable for the number of hours he 
daily spent in the open air. It seems to be almost cer- 



20 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

tain now, from concurrent testimony, gathered from phy- 
sicians and those who knew him best in England, that 
Thackeray's premature death was hastened by an utter 
disregard of the natural laws. His vigorous frame gave 
ample promise of longevity, but he drew too largely on 
his brain and not enough on his legs. High living and 
high thinking, he used to say, was the correct reading of 
the proverb. 

He was a man of the tenderest feelings, very apt to be 
cajoled into doing what the world calls foolish things, 
and constantly performing feats of unwisdom, which per- 
formances he was immoderately laughing at all the while 
in his books. No man has impaled snobbery with such 
a stinging rapier, but he always accused himself of being 
a snob, past all cure. This I make no doubt was one of 
his exaggerations, but there was a grain of truth in the 
remark, which so sharp an observer as himself could 
not fail to notice, even though the victim was so near 
home. 

Thackeray announced to me by letter in the early 
autumn of 1852 that he had determined to visit America, 
and would sail for Boston by the Canada on the 30th of 
October. All the necessary arrangements for his lecturing 
tour had been made without troubling him with any of 
the details. He arrived on a frosty November evening, 
and went directly to the Tremont House, where rooms 
had been engaged for him. I remember his delight in 
getting off the sea, and the enthusiasm with which he 
hailed the announcement that dinner would be ready 
shortly. A few friends were ready to sit down with 
him, and he seemed greatly to enjoy the novelty of an 
American repast. In London he had been very curious 
in his inquiries about American oysters, as marvellous 
stories, which he did not believe, had been told him of 
their great size. "We apologized — although we had taken 



THACKERAY. 21 

care that the largest specimens to he procured should 
startle his unwonted vision when he came to the table 
— for what we called the extreme smallness of the oysters, 
promising that we would do better next time. Six bloat- 
ed Falstaffian bivalves lay before him in their shells. I 
noticed that he gazed at them anxiously with fork up- 
raised ; then he whispered to me, with a look of anguish, 
" How shall I do it ? " I described to him the simple 
process by which the free-born citizens of America were 
accustomed to accompKsh such a task. He seemed satis- 
fied that the thing was feasible, selected the smallest one 
in the half-dozen (rejecting a large one, "because," he said, 
"it resembled the High Priest's servant's ear that Peter 
cut off"), and then bowed his head as if he were saying 
grace. All eyes were upon him to watch the effect of a 
new sensation in the person of a great British author. 
Opening his mouth very wide, he struggled for a moment, 
and then all was over. I shall never forget the comic 
look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied 
shells. I broke the perfect stillness by asking him how 
he felt. " Profoundly grateful," he gasped, " and as if I 
had swallowed a little baby." It was many years ago 
since we gathered about him on that occasion, but, if 
my memory serves me, we had what might be called a 
pleasant evening. Indeed, I remember much hilarity, 
and sounds as of men laughing and singing far into 
midnight. I could not deny, if called upon to testify in 
court, that we had a good time on that frosty November 
evening. 

We had many happy days and nights together both in 
England and America, but I remember none happier than 
that evening we passed with him when the Punch people 
came to dine at his own table with the silver statuette of 
Mr. Punch in full dress looking down upon the hospitable 
board from the head of the table. This silver figure 



22 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

always stood in a conspicuous place when Tom Taylor, 
Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, and the rest of his joUy 
companions and life-long cronies were gathered together. 
If I were to say here that there were any dull moments 
on that occasion, I should not expect to be strictly be- 
lieved. / 
Thackeray's playfulness was a marked peculiarity ; a 
great deal of the time he seemed like a school-boy, just 
released from his task. In the midst of the most serious 
topic under discussion he was fond of asking permission 
to sing a comic song, or he would beg to be allowed to 
enliven the occasion by the instant introduction of a brief 
double-shuffle. Barry Cornwall told me that when he 
and Charles Lamb were once making up a dinner-party 
together, Charles asked him not to invite a certain lugu- 
brious friend of theirs. " Because," said Lamb, " he would 
cast a damper even over a funeral." I have often con- 
trasted the habitual qualities of that gloomy friend of 
theirs with the astounding spirits of both Thackeray and 
Dickens. They always seemed to me to be standing in 
the sunshine, and to be constantly warning other people 
out of cloudland. During Thackeray's first visit to 
America his jollity knew no bounds, and it became ne- 
cessary often to repress him when he was walking in the 
street. I well remember his uproarious shouting and 
dancing when he was told that the tickets to his first 
course of readings were all sold, and when we rode to- 
gether from his hotel to the lecture-hall he insisted on 
thrusting both his long legs out of the carriage window, 
in deference, as he said, to his magnanimous ticket- 
holders. An instance of his procrastination occurred the 
evening of his first public appearance in America. His 
lecture was advertised to take place at half past seven, 
and when he was informed of the hour, he said he would 
tiy and be ready at eight o'clock, but thought it very 



THACKERAY. 23 

doubtful. Horrified at this assertion, I tried to impress 
upon him the importance of punctuality on this, the 
night of his first bow to an American audience. At a 
quarter past seven I called for him, and found him not 
only unshaved and undressed for the evening, but raptu- 
rously absorbed in making a pen-and-ink drawing to 
illustrate a passage in Goethe's Sorrows of Werther, for 
a lady, which illustration, — a charming one, by the way, 
for he was greatly skilled in drawing, — he vowed he 
would finish before he would budge an inch in the 
direction of the (I omit the adjective) Melodeon. A 
comical incident occurred just as he was about leaving the 
hall, after his first lecture in Boston, A shabby, ungainly 
looking man stepped briskly up to him in the anteroom, 
seized his hand and announced himseK as " proprietor of 
the Mammoth Eat," and proposed to exchange season 
tickets. Thackeray, with the utmost gravity, exchanged 
cards and promised to call on the wonderful quadruped 
next day. 

Thackeray's motto was 'Avoid performing to-day, if pos- 
sible, what can be postponed till to-morrow.' Althougli he 
received large sums for his writings, he managed without 
much difficulty to keep his expenditures fully abreast, and 
often in advance of, his receipts. His pecuniary object 
in visiting America the second time was to lay up, as he 
said, a " pot of money " for his two daughters, and he left 
the country with more than half his lecture engagements 
unfulfilled. He was to have visited various cities in the 
Middle and Western States ; but he took up a newspaper 
one night, in his hotel in New York, before retiring, saw 
a steamer advertised to sail the next morning for England, 
was seized with a sudden fit of homesickness, rang the 
bell for his servant, who packed up his luggage that night, 
and the next day he sailed. The first intimation I had of 
his departure was a card which he sent by the pilot of the 



24 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

steamer, with these words upon it : " Good by, Fields ; 
good by, Mrs. Fields ; God bless everybody, says W. M. T." 
Of course he did not avail himself of the opportunity 
aiforded him for receiving a very large sum in America, 
and he afterwards told me in London, that if Mr. Astor 
had offered him half his fortune if he would allow 
that particular steamer to sail without him, he should 
have declined the well-intentioned but impossible favor, 
and gone on board. 

No man has left behind him a tenderer regard for his 
genius and foibles among his friends than Thackeray, He 
had a natural love of good which nothing could wholly 
blur or destroy. He was a most generous critic of the 
writings of his contemporaries, and no one has printed or 
spoken warmer praise of Dickens, in one sense his great 
rival, than he. 

Thackeray was not a voluminous correspondent, but 
what exquisite letters he has left in the hands of many of 
his friends ! " Should any letters arrive," he says in a 
little missive from Philadelphia, " addressed to the care 
of J. T. F. for the ridiculous author of this, that, and the 
other, F. is requested to send them to Mercantile Library, 
Baltimore. My ghostly enemy will be delighted (or will 
gnash his teeth with rage) to hear that the lectures in the 
capital of Pa. have been very well attended. No less 
than 750 people paid at the door on Friday night, and 
though last night there was a storm of snow so furious 
that no reasonable mortal could face it, 500 (at least) 
amiable maniacs were in the lecture-room, and wept oveJ 
the fate of the last king of these colonies." 

Almost every day, while he was lecturing in America, 
he would send off little notes exquisitely written in point 
of penmanship, and sometimes embellished with charac- 
teristic pen-drawings. Having attended an extemporane- 
ous supper festival at " Porter's," he was never tired of 





WOL^Z 



n 



THACKERAY. 25 

"going again." Here is a scrap of paper holding these 
few words, written in 1852. 

" Nine o'clock, p. m. Tremont. 
"Arrangements have just been concluded for a meeting somewhere 
to-night, which we much desire you should attend. Are you equal 
to two nights running of good time ? " 

Then follows a pen portrait of a friend of his with a 
cloven foot and a devil's tail just visible under his cloak. 
Sometimes, to puzzle his correspondent, he would write in 
so small a hand that the note could not be read without 
the aid of a magnifying-glass. Calligraphy was to him 
one of the fine arts, and he once told Dr. John Brown of 
Edinburgh, that if all trades failed, he would earn six- 
pences by writing the Lord's Prayer and the Creed (not 
the Athanasian) in the size of that coin. He greatly 
delighted in rhyming and lisping notes and billets. Here 
is one of them, dated from Baltimore without signa- 
ture : — 

" Dear F th 1 The thanguinary fateth (I don't know what 

their anger meanth) brought me your letter of the eighth, yethter- 
day, only the fifteenth I What blunder cauthed by chill delay 
(thee Doctor Johnthon'th noble verthe) Thuth kept my longing thoul 
away, from all that motht I love on earth ? Thankth for the happy 
contenth ! — thothe Dithpatched to J. G. K. and Thonth, and that 
thmall letter you inclothe from Parith, from my dearetht oneth! I 
pray each month may tho increathe my thmall account with J. G. 
King, that all the thipth which croth the theath, good tidingth of 
my girlth may bring ! — that every blething fortune yieldth, I altho 

pray, may come to path on Mithter and Mrth. J. T. F th, and all 

good friendth in Bothton, Math. 1 " 

"VVliile he was staying at the Clarendon Hotel, in New 
York, every morning's mail brought a few lines, sometimes 
only one line, sometimes only two words, from him, re- 
porting progress. One day he tells me : " Immense haw- 
dience last night." Another day he says : " Our shares 
look very much up tliis morning." On the 29th of 
2 



26 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

November, 1852, he writes: "I find I have a much 
bigger voice than I knew of, and am not afraid of any- 
body." At another time he writes : " I make no doubt 
you have seen that admirable paper, the New York 
Herald, and are aware of the excellent reception my 
lectures are having in this city. It was a lucky Friday 
when first I set foot in this country. I have nearly saved 
the fifty dollars you lent me in Boston." In a letter from 
Savannah, dated the 19th of March, 1853, in answer to 
one I had written to him, telling him that a charming 
epistle, which accompanied the gift of a silver mug he 
had sent to me some time before, had been stolen from 
me, he says : — 

" My dear fellow, I remember I asked you in that letter to accef t 
a silver mug in token of our pleasant days together, and to drink a 

health sometimes in it to a sincere friend Smith and Elder 

write me word they have sent by a Cunard to Boston a packet of 
paper, stamped etc. in London. I want it to be taken from the 

Custom-House, dooties paid etc., and dispatched to Miss , New 

York. Hold your tongue, and don't laugh, you rogue. Why 
should n't she have her paper, and I my pleasure, without your 
wicked, wicked sneers and imperence ? I 'm only a cipher in the 
young lady's estimation, and why should n't I sigh for her if I hke. 
I hope I shall see you all at Boston before very long. I always 
consider Boston as my native place, you know." 

I wish I could recall half the incidents connected with 
the dear, dear old Thackeray days, when I saw him so 
constantly and enjoyed him so hugely ; but, alas ! many 
of them are gone, with much more that is lovely and 
would have been of good report, could they be now 
remembered ; — they are dead as — (Holmes always puts 
your simile quite right for you), — 

" Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses, 
On the old banks of the Nile." 

But while I sit here quietly, and have no fear of any 
bad, unsympathizing listeners who might, if some other 



THACKERAY. 27 

sulvject were up, frown upon my levity, let me walk 
through the dusky chambers of my memory and report 
vvhat I find there, just as the records turn up, without 
regard to method. 

I once made a pilgrimage with Thackeray (at my rec[uest, 
of course, the visits were planned) to the various houses 
where his books had been written ; and I remember when 
We came to Young Street, Kensington, he said, with mock 
gravity, " Down on your knees, you rogue, for here ' Vanity 
Fair ' w^as penned ! And I will go down with you, for I 
have a high opinion of that little production myself." He 
was always perfectly honest ia his expressions about his 
own writings, and it was delightful to hear him praise 
them when he could depend on his listeners. A friend 
congratulated him once on that touch in " Vanity Fair " 
in which Becky " admires " her husband when he is giving 
Steyne the punishment which ruins her for life. " Well," 
he said, " when I wrote the sentence, I slapped my fist on 
the table and said, ' Thcd is a touch of genius ! ' " 

He told me he was nearly forty years old before he was 
recognized in literature as belonging to a class of writers 
at all above the ordinary magazinists of his day. " I 
turned off far better things then than I do now," said he, 
" and I wanted money sadly, (my parents were rich but 
respectable, and I had spent my guineas in my youth,) but 
how little I got for my work ! It makes me laugh," he 
continued, " at what The Times pays me now, when I 
think of the old days, and how much better I wrote for 
them then, and got a shilling where I now get ten." 

One day he wanted a little service done for a friend, 
and I remember his very quizzical expression, as he said, 
" Please say the favor asked will greatly oblige a man of 
the name of Thackeray, whose only recommendation is, 
that he has seen Napoleon and Goethe, and is the owner 
of Schiller's sword." 



28 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

I tliink he told me lie and Tennyson were at one time 
intimate ; but I distinctly remember a description he gave 
me of having heard the poet, when a young man, storm- 
ing about in the first rapture of composing liis poem of 
" Ulysses." One line of it Tennyson greatly revelled in, — 

" And see the great Achilles, whom we knew." 

r 

" He went through the streets," said Thackeray, " scream- 
ing about liis great Achilles, whom we knew," as if we had 
all made the acquaintance of that gentleman, and were 
very proud of it. 

One of the most comical and interesting occasions I 
remember, in connection with Thackeray, was going with 
him to a grand concert given fifteen or twenty years ago 
by Madame Sontag. "We sat near an entrance door in 
the haU, and every one who came in, male and female, 
Thackeray pretended to know, and gave each one a name 
and brief chronicle, as the presence flitted by. It was in 
Boston, and as he had been in town only a day or two, and 
knew only haK a dozen people in it, the biographies were 
most amusing. As I happened to know several people 
who passed, it was droll enough to hear this great master 
of character give them their dues. Mr. Choate moved 
along in his regal, affluent manner. The large style 
of the man, so magnificent and yet so modest, at once 
arrested Thackeray's attention, and he forbore to place 
him in his extemporaneous catalogue. I remember a 
pallid, sharp-faced girl fluttering past, and how Thackeray 
exulted in the history of this " frail little bit of porce- 
lain," as he called her. There was something in her 
manner that made him hate her, and he insisted she had 
murdered somebody on her way to the hall. Altogether 
this marvellous prelude to the concert made a deep im- 
pression on Thackeray's one listener, into whose ear he 
whispered his fatal insinuations. There is one man stUl 



THACKERAY. 29 

living and moving about the streets I walk in occasion- 
ally, whom I never encounter without almost a shudder, 
remembering as I do the unerring shaft which Thackeray 
sent that night into the unknown man's character. 

One day, many years ago, I saw him chaffing on the 
sidewalk in London, in front of the Athenaeum Club, with 
a monstrous-sized, "copiously ebriose" cabman, and I 
judged from the driver's ludicrously careful way of land- 
ing the coin deep down in his breeches-pocket, that Thack- 
eray had given him a very unusual fare. " Who is your 
fat friend ? " I asked, crossing over to shake hands with 
him. " 0, that indomitable youth is an old crony of 
mine," he replied ; and then, quoting Falstaff, " a goodly, 
portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent, of a cheerful look, 
a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage." It was the 
manner of saying this, then, and there in the London 
street, the cabman moving slowly off on his sorry vehicle, 
with one eye (an eye dewy with gin and water, and a tear 
of gratitude, perhaps) on Thackeray, and the great man 
himself so jovial and so full of kindness ! 

It was a treat to hear him, as I once did, discourse of 
Shakespeare's probable life in Stratford among his neigh- 
bors. He painted, as he alone could paint, the great poet 
sauntering about the lanes without the slightest show of 
greatness, having a crack with the farmers, and in very 
earnest talk about the crops. " I don't believe," said 
Thackeray, " that these village cronies of his ever looked 
upon him as the mighty poet. 



' Sailing with supreme dominion 
Through the azure deep of air,* 



but simply as a wholesome, good-natured citizen, with 
whom it was always pleasant to have a chat. I can see 
him now," continued Thackeray, " leaning over a cottage 
gate, and tasting good Master Such-a-one's home-brewed, 



30 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and inquiring with a real interest after the mistress and her 
children." Long before he put it into his lecture, I heard 
him say in words to the same effect : " I should like to 
have been Shakespeare's shoe-black, just to have lived in 
his house, just to have worshipped him, to have run on 
his errands, and sieen that sweet, serene face." To have 
heard Thackeray depict, in his own charming manner, and 
at considerable length, the imaginary walks and talks of 
Shakespeare, when he would return to his home from occa- 
sional visits to London, pouring into the ready ears of his 
unsophisticated friends and neighbors the gossip from 
town which he thought would be likely to interest them, 
is something to remember all one's days. 

The enormous circulation achieved by the Comhill 
Magazine, when it was first started with Thackeray for its 
editor in chief, is a matter of literary history. The an- 
nouncement by his publishers that a sale of a hundred 
and ten thousand of the first number had been reached 
made the editor half delirious with joy, and he ran away 
to Paris to be rid of the excitement for a few days. I 
met him by appointment at his hotel in the Eue de la 
Paix, and found him wild with exultation and full of 
enthusiasm for excellent George Smith, his publisher. 
" London," he exclaimed, " is not big enough to contain me 
now, and I am obliged to add Paris to my residence ! 
Great heavens," said he, throwing up his long arms, 
" where wiU this tremendous circulation stop ! "Who 
knows but that I shall have to add Vienna and Eome to 
my whereabouts ? If the worst comes to the worst, New 
York, also, may fall into my clutches, and only the Rocky 
Mountains may be able to stop my progress ! " Those 
days in Paris with him were simply tremendous. We 
dined at all possible and impossible places together. We 
walked round and round the glittering court of the Palais 
Pioyal, gazing in at the windows of the jewellers' shops, 



THACKERAY. 31 

and all my efforts were necessary to restrain him from 
rusMng in and ordering a pocketful of diamonds and " other 
trifles," as he called them ; " for," said he, " how can I spend 
the princely income which Smith allows me for editing 
the Cornhill, unless I begin instantly somewhere ? " If 
he saw a group of three or four persons talking together 
in an excited way, after the manner of that then riant 
Parisian people, he would whisper to me with immense 
gesticulation: "There, there, you see the news has reached 
Paris, and perhaps the number has gone up since my 
last accounts from London." His spirits during those 
few days were colossal, and he told me that he found it 
impossible to sleep, " for counting up his subscribers." 

I happened to know personally (and let me modestly 
add, with some degree of sympathy) what he suffered 
editorially, when he had the charge and responsibihty 
of a magazme. With first-class contributors he got on 
very well, he said, but the extortioners and revilers 
bothered the very life out of him. He gave me some 
amusing accounts of his misunderstandings with the 
" fair " (as he loved to call them), some of whom followed 
him up so closely with their poetical compositions, that his 
house (he was then living in Onslow Square) was never 
free of interruption. " The darlings demanded," said he, 
" that I should re-write, if I could not understand their 

nonsense and put their halting lines into proper 

form." " I was so appalled," said he, " when they set 
upon me with their ' ipics and their ipecacs,' that you 
might have knocked me down with a feather, sir. It was 
insupportable, and I fled away into France." As he went 
on, waxing droUy furious at the recollection of vari- 
ous editorial scenes, I could not help remembering Mr, 
Yellowplush's recommendation, thus characteristically 
expressed : " Take my advice, honrabble sir, — listen to a 
humble footmin : it 's genrally best in poatry to under- 



32 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

stand puffickly what you mean yourself, and to igspress 
your meaning clearly afterwoods, — in the simpler words 
the better, p'r'aps." 

He took very great delight in his young daughter's first 
contributions to the Cornhill, and I shall always remember 
how he made me get into a cab, one day in London, that 
I might hear, as we rode along, the joyful news he had to 
impart, that he had just been reading his daughter's first 
paper, which was entitled " Little Scholars." " Wlien I 
read it," said he, " I blubbered like a child, it is so goo(?v 
so simple, and so honest ; and my little girl wrote it, every 
word of it," 

During his second visit to Boston I was asked to invite 
him to attend an evening meeting of a scientific club, 
which was to be held at the house of a distinguished 
member. I was very reluctant to ask him to be present, 
for I knew he could be easily bored, and I was fearful 
that a prosy essay or geological speech might ensue, and 1 
knew he would be exasperated with me, even although I 
were the innocent cause of his affliction. My worst fears 
were realized. We had hardly got seated, before a dull, 
bilious-looking old gentleman rose, and applied his auger 
with such pertinacity that we were all bored nearly to 
distraction. I dared not look at Thackeray, but I felt 
that his eye was upon me. My distress may be imagined, 
when he got up quite deliberately from the prominent 
place where a chair had been set for him, and made his 
exit very noiselessly into a small anteroom leading into 
the larger room, and in which no one was sitting. The 
small apartment was dimly lighted, but he knew that I 
knew he was there. Then commenced a series of panto- 
mimic feats impossible to describe adequately. He threw 
an imaginary person (myself, of course) upon the floor, 
and proceeded to stab him several times with a paper- 
folder, which he caught up for the purpose. After dis- 



THACKERAY. 33 

posing of his victim in this way, he was not satisfied, for 
the dull lecture still went on in the other room, and he 
fired an imaginary revolver several times at an imaginary 
head. Still, the droning speaker proceeded with his frozen 
subject (it was something about the Arctic regions, if I 
remember rightly), and now began the greatest panto- 
mimic scene of all, namely, murder by poison, after the 
manner in which the player king is disposed of in Hamlet. 
Thackeray had found a small vial on the mantel-sheK, 
and out of that he proceeded to pour the imaginary "juice 
of cursed hebenon " into the imaginary porches of some- 
body's ears. The whole thing was inimitably done, and 
I hoped nobody saw it but myself ; but years afterwards, 
a ponderous, fat-witted young man put the question 
squarely to me : " What was the matter with Mr. Thack- 
eray, that night the club met at Mr. 's house ? " 

Overhearing me say one morning something about the 
vast attractions of London to a greenhorn like myself, he 
broke in with, " Yes, but you have not seen the grandest 
one yet ! Go with me to-day to St. Paul's and hear 
the charity children sing." So we went, and I saw the 
" head cynic of literature," the " hater of himianity," as a 
critical dunce in the Times once called liim, liiding liis 
bowed face, wet with tears, while his whole frame shook 
with emotion, as the children of poverty rose to pour out 
their anthems of praise. Afterwards he wrote in one of 
his books this passage, which seems to me perfect in its 
feeling and tone : — 

" And yet there is one day in the year when I think St. Paul's 
presents the noblest sight in the whole world ; when five thousand 
charity children, with cheeks like nosegays, and sweet, fresh voices, 
sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise and 
happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world, — coro- 
nations, Parisian splendors, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's chapels 
with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering choirs 
of fat soprani, — but think in all Christendom there is no such 

2* 



34 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Bight as Charity Children's day. Non Anglei, sed angeli. As one 
looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents : as the first note 
etrikes : indeed one may almost fancy that cherubs are singing." 

I parted with Thackeray for the last time in the street, 
at midnight, in London, a few months before his death. 
The Cornhill Magazine, under his editorship, having 
proved a very great success, grand dinners were given 
every month in honor of the new venture. We had been 
Bitting late at one of these festivals, and, as it was getting 
toward morning, I thought it wise, as far as I was con- 
cerned, to be moving homeward before the sun rose. 
Seeing my intention to withdraw, he insisted on driving 
me in his brougham to my lodgings. When we reached 
the outside door of our host, Thackeray's servant, seeing 
a stranger with his master, touched his hat and asked 
where he should drive us. It was then between one and 
two o'clock, — time certainly for all decent diners-out to be 
at rest. Thackeray put on one of his most quizzical ex- 
pressions, and said to John, in answer to his question, " I 
think we will make a morning call on the Lord Bishop of 
London." John knew his master's quips and cranks too 
well to suppose he was in earnest, so I gave him my 
address, and we went on. When we reached my lodgings 
the clocks were striking two, and the early morning air 
was raw and piercing. Opposing all my entreaties for 
leave-taking in the carriage, he insisted upon getting out 
on the sidewalk and escortmg me up to my door, saying, 
with a mock heroic protest to the heavens above us, 
" That it would be shameful for a full-blooded Britisher 
to leave an unprotected Yankee friend exposed to ruffians, 
who prowl about the streets with an eye to plunder." 
Then giving me a gigantic embrace, he sang a verse of 
which he knew me to be very fond ; and so vanished out 
of my sight the great-hearted author of " Pendennis " and 
" Vanity Fair." But I think of him still as moving, in 



THACKERAY. 35 

his own stately way, up and down tlie crowded thorough- 
fares of London, dropping in at the Garrick, or sitting at 
the window of the Athenaeum Club, and watching the 
stupendous tide of life that is ever moving past in that 
wonderful city. 

Thackeray was a master in every sense, having as it 
were, in himself, a double quantity of being. Eobust 
humor and lofty sentiment alternated so strangely in him, 
that sometimes he seemed like the natural son of Eabelais, 
and at others he rose up a very twin brother of the Strat- 
ford Seer. There was nothing in him amorphous and 
unconsidered. Whatever he chose to do was always 
perfectly done. There was a genuine Thackeray flavor in 
everything he was willing to say or to write. He detected 
with unfailing skill the good or the vile wherever it 
existed. He had an unerring eye, a firm understanding, 
and abounding truth. " Two of his great master powers," 
said the chairman at a dinner given to him many years 
ago in Edinburgh, "are satire and sympathy" George 
Brimley remarked, " That he could not have painted Vanity 
Fair as he has, unless Eden had been shining in his inner 
eye." He had, indeed, an awful insight, with a world 
of solemn tenderness and simplicity, in his composition. 
Those who heard the same voice that withered the memory 
of King George the Fourth repeat " The spacious firma- 
ment on high " have a recollection not easily to be blotted 
from the mind, and I have a kind of pity for all who 
were born so recently as not to have heard and understood 
Thackeray's Lectures. But they can read him, and I beg 
of them to try and appreciate the tenderer phase of his 
genius, as well as the sarcastic one. He teaches many 
lessons to young men, and here is one of them, which I 
quote memoriter from " Barry Lyndon " : " Do you not, as 
a boy, remember waking of bright summer mornings and 
finding your mother looking over you ? had not the gaze 



36 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

of her tender eyes stolen into your senses long before yoti 
woke, and cast over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell 
of peace, and love, and fresh-springing joy ? " My dear 
friend, John Brown, of Edinburgh (whom may God long 
preserve to both countries where he is so loved and hon- 
ored), chronicles this touching incident. "We cannot 
resist here recalling one Sunday evening in December, 
when Thackeray was walking with two friends along 
uhe Dean Eoad, to the west of Edinburgh, — one of the 
noblest outlets to any city. It was a lovely evening ; 
such a sunset as one never forgets ; a rich dark bar of 
cloud hovered over the sun, going down behind the High- 
land hills, lying bathed in amethystine bloom ; between 
this cloud and the hills there was a narrow slip of the 
pure ether, of a tender cowslip color, lucid, and as if it 
were the very body of heaven in its clearness; every 
object standing out as if etched upon the sky. The 
northwest end of Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and 
rocks, lay in the heart of this pure radiance ; and there a 
wooden crane, used in the granary below, was so placed as 
to assume the figure of a cross; there it was, unmistakable, 
lifted up against the crystalline sky. All three gazed at 
it silently. As they gazed, Thackeray gave utterance in a 
tremulous, gentle, and rapid voice to what all were feeling, 
in tlie word, * Calvary ! ' The friends walked on in 
silence, and then turned to other things. All that evening 
he was very gentle and serious, speaking, as he seldom 
did, of divine things, — of death, of sin, of eternity, of 
salvation, expressing his simple faith in God and in his 
Saviour." 

Thackeray was found dead in his bed on Christmas 
morning, and he probably died without pain. His mother 
and his daughters were sleeping under the same roof when 
he passed away alone. Dickens told me that, looking on 
hiTn as he lay in his coffin, he wondered that the figure he 



THACKERAY. 37 

had known in life as one of such noble presence could 
seem so shrunken and wasted ; but there had been years 
of sorrow, years of labor, years of pain, in that now ex- 
hausted life. It was his happiest Christmas morning 
when he heard the Voice calling him homeward to un- 
broken rest. 



HA WTHORNE, 



A hundred years ago Henry Vaiighan seems almost to have anticipated 
Hawthorne'' s appearance when he wrote that beautiful line, 

" Feed on the vocal silence of hit eye." 



III. 

HAWTHOENE. 

I AM sitting to-day opposite the likeness of the rarest 
genius America has given to literature, — a man who 
lately sojourned in this busy "world of ours, hut during 
many years of his life 

" Wandered lonely as a cloud," — 

a man who had, so to speak, a physical affinity with soli- 
tude. The writings of this author have never soiled the 
public mind with one unlovely image. His men and 
women have a magic of their own, and we shall wait a 
long time before another arises among us to take his 
place. Indeed, it seems probable no one will ever walk 
precisely the same round of fiction which he traversed 
with so free and firm a step. 

The portrait I am looking at was made by Eowse (an 
exquisite drawing), and is a very truthful representation 
of the head of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was several times 
painted and photographed, but it was impossible for art to 
give the light and beauty of his wonderful eyes. I remem- 
ber to have heard, in the literary circles of Great Britain, 
that, since Burns, no author had appeared there with a finer 
face than Hawthorne's. Old Mrs. Basil Montagu told 
me, many years ago, that she sat next to Burns at dinner, 
when he appeared in society in the first flush of his fame, 
after the Edinburgh edition of his poems had been pub- 
lished. She said, among other things, that, although the 



42 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

company consisted of some of the best bred men of England, 
Burns seemed to her the most perfect gentleman among 
them. She noticed, particularly, his genuine grace and def- 
erential manner toward women, and I was interested to hear 
Mrs. Montagu's brilliant daughter, when speaking of Haw- 
thome's advent in English society, describe him in almost 
the same terms as I had heard her mother, years before, 
describe the Scottish poet. I happened to be in London 
with Hawthorne during his consular residence in England, 
and was always greatly delighted at the rustle of admi- 
ration his personal appearance excited when he entered a 
room. His bearing was modestly grand, and his voice 
touched the ear like a melody. 

Here is a golden curl which adorned the head of 
Nathaniel Hawthorne when he lay a little cliild in his 
cradle. It was given to me many years ago by one near 
and dear to him. I have two other similar " blossoms," 
which I keep pressed in the same book of remembrance. 
One is from the head of John Keats, and was given to me 
by Charles Cowden Clarke, and the other graced the head 
of Mary Mitford, and was sent to me after her death by 
her friendly physician, who watched over her last hours. 
Leigh Hunt says with a fine poetic emphasis, 

" There seems a love in hair, though it be dead. 
It is the gentlest, yet the strongest thread 
Of our frail plant, — a blossom from the tree 
Surviving the proud trunk ; — as though it said, 
Patience and Gentleness is Power. In me 
Behold affectionate eternity." 

There is a charming old lady, now living two doors 
from me, who dwelt in Salem when Hawthorne was born, 
and, being his mother's neighbor at that time (Mrs. Haw- 
thorne then lived in Union Street), there came a message 
to her intimating that the baby could be seen by calling. 
So my friend tells me she went in, and saw the little 




ot)^ (HufWhd 



HAWTHORNE. 43 

making thing in its mother's arms. She is very clear as 
to the beauty of the infant, even when only a week old, 
and remembers that " he was a pleasant child, quite hand- 
some, with golden curls." She also tells me that Haw- 
thorne's mother was a beautiful woman, with remarkable 
eyes, full of sensibility and expression, and that she was 
a person of singular purity of mind. Hawthorne's father, 
whom my friend knew well, she describes as a warm- 
hearted and kindly man, very fond of children. He was 
somewhat inclined to melancholy, and of a reticent dispo- 
sition. He was a great reader, employing all his leisure 
time at sea over books. 

Hawthorne's father died when Nathaniel was four years 
old, and from that time his uncle Eobert Manning took 
charge of his education, sending him to the best schools and 
afterwards to college. When the lad was about nine 
years old, while playing bat and ball at school, he lamed 
his foot so badly that he used two crutches for more than 
a year. His foot ceased to grow like the other, and the 
doctors of the town were called in to examine the little 
lame boy. He was not perfectly restored till he was 
twelve years old. His kind-hearted schoolmaster, Joseph 
Worcester, the author of the Dictionary, came every day 
to the house to hear the boy's lessons, so that he did not 
fall behind in his studies. [There is a tradition in the 
Manning family that Mr. Worcester was very much inter- 
ested in Maria Manning (a sister of Mrs. Hawthorne), 
who died in 1814, and that this was one reason of his 
attention to Nathaniel.] The boy used to lie flat upon the 
carpet, and read and study the long days through. Some 
time after he had recovered from this lameness he had an 
illness causing him to lose the use of his limbs, and he 
was obliged to seek again the aid of his old crutches, 
which were then pieced out at the ends to make them 
longer. While a little child, and as soon almost as he 



44 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

began to read, the authors he most delighted in were 
Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Thomson. The " Castle 
of Indolence " was an especial favorite with him during 
boyhood. The first book he bought with his own money 
was a copy of Spenser's " Faery Queen." 

One who watched him during his childhood tells me, 
that " when he was six years old his favorite book was 
Bunyan's ' Pilgrim's Progress ' : and that whenever he 
went to visit his Grandmother Hawthorne, he used to 
take the old family copy to a large chair in a corner of 
the room near a window, and read it by the hour, with- 
out once speaking. No one ever thought of asking how 
much of it he understood. I think it one of the happiest 
circumstances of his training, that nothing was ever 
explained to him, and that there was no professedly in- 
tellectual person in the family to usurp the place of 
Providence and supplement its shortcomings, in order to 
make him what he was never intended to be. His mind 
developed itself ; intentional cultivation might have spoiled 

it He used to invent long stories, wild and fanciful, 

and tell where he was going when he grew up, and of the 
wonderful adventures he was to meet with, always ending 
with, ' And I 'm never coming back again,' in quite a 
solemn tone, that enjoined upon us the advice to value 
him the more while he stayed with us." 

When he could scarcely speak plain, it is recalled by 
members of the family that the little fellow would go 
about the house, repeating with vehement emphasis and 
gestures certain stagy lines from Shakespeare's Kichard 
III., which he had overheard from older persons about him. 
One line, in particular, made a great impression upon 
him, and he would start up on the most unexpected 
occasions and fire off in his loudest tone, 

" Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass." 

On the 21st of August, 1820, No. 1 of " The Spectatoi; 



HAWTHORNE. 45 

edited by N. Hathome," neatly written in printed letters 
by the editor's own hand, appeared. A prospectus was 
issued the week before, setting forth that the paper would 
be published on Wednesdays, " price 12 cents per annum, 
payment to be made at the end of the year." Among the 
advertisements is the following : — 

" Nathaniel Hathome proposes to publish by subscription a New 
Edition of the Miseries of Authors, to which will be added a 
Sequel, containing Facts and Remarks drawn from his own experi- 
ence." 

Six numbers only were published. The following sub- 
jects were discussed by young " Hathorne " in the Spec- 
tator,— "On Solitude," "The End of the Year," "On 
Industry," " On Benevolence," " On Autumn," " On 
Wealth," " On Hope," " On Courage." The poetry on the 
last page of each number was evidently written by the 
editor, except in one instance, when an Address to the 
Sun is signed by one of his sisters. In one of the num- 
bers he apologizes that no deaths of any importance have 
taken place in the town. Under the head of Births, he 
gives the following news, "The lady of Dr. Winthrop 
Brown, a son and heir. Mrs. Hathorne's cat, seven 
kittens. We hear that both of the above ladies are in 
a state of convalescence." One of the literary advertise- 
ments reads : — 

" Blank Books made and for sale by N. Hathorne." 

While Hawthorne was yet a little fellow the family 
moved to Eaymond in the State of Maine; here his 
out-of-door life did him great service, for he grew tall 
and strong, and became a good shot and an excellent fish- 
erman. Here also his imagination was first stimulated, 
the wild scenery and the primitive manners of the people 
contributing greatly to awaken his thought. At seventeen 
he entered Bowdoin College, and after his graduation re- 
turned again to live in Salem. During his youth he had 



46 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

an impression that he would die before the age of twenty- 
five ; but the Mannings, his ever-watchful and kind rela- 
tions, did everything possible for the care of his health, 
and he was tided safely over the period when he was 
most delicate. Professor Packard told me that when 
Hawthorne was a student at Bowdoin in his freshman 
year, his Latin compositions showed such facility that 
they attracted the special attention of those who exam- 
ined them. The Professor also remembers that Haw- 
thorne's English compositions elicited from Professor 
Newman (author of the work on Ehetoric) high com- 
mendations. 

When a youth Hawthorne made a journey into 'New 
Hampshire with his uncle, Samuel Manning. They trav- 
elled in a two-wheeled chaise, and met with many adven- 
tures which the young man chronicled in his home letters. 
Some of the touches in these epistles were very charac- 
teristic and amusing, and showed in those early years 
his quick observation and descriptive power. The trav- 
ellers " put up " at Farmington, in order to rest over Sun- 
day. Hawthorne writes to a member of the family in 
Salem: "As we were wearied with rapid travelling, we 
found it impossible to attend divine service, which was, 
of course, very grievous to us both. In the evening, how- 
ever, I went to a Bible class, with a very polite and 
agreeable gentleman, whom I afterwards discovered to be 
a strolling tailor, of very questionable habits." 

When the travellers arrived in the Shaker village of 
Canterbury, Hawthorne at once made the acquaintance 
of the Community there, and the account which he sent 
home was to the effect that the brothers and sisters led a 
good and comfortable life, and he wrote : " If it were not 
for the ridiculous ceremonies, a man might do a worse 
thing than to join them." Indeed, he spoke to them about 
becoming a member of the Society, and was evidently 



HA WTHORNE. 47 

much impressed with the thrift and peace of the estah- 
lishment. 

This visit in early life to the Shakers is interesting as 
suggesting to Hawthorne his beautiful story of " The 
Canterbury Pilgrims," which is in his volume of "The 
Snow-Image, and other Twice-Told Tales." 

A lady of my acquaintance (the identical " Little Annie" 
of the "Eamble" in "Twice-Told Tales") recalls the 
young man " when he returned home after his collegiate 
studies." " He was even then," she says, " a most notice- 
able person, never going into society, and deeply engaged 
in reading everything he could lay his hands on. It was 
said in those days that he had read every book in the 
Athenseum Library in Salem." This lady remembers that 
when she was a child, and before Hawthorne had printed 
any of his stories, she used to sit on his knee and lean 
her head on his shoulder, while by the hour he would fas- 
cinate her with delightful legends, much more wonderful 
and beautiful than any she has ever read since in printed 
books. 

The traits of the Hawthorne character were stern 
probity and truthfulness. Hawthorne's mother had many 
characteristics in common with her distinguished son, she 
also being a reserved and thoughtful person. Those who 
knew the family describe the son's affection for her as of 
the deepest and tenderest nature, and they remember that 
when she died his grief was almost insupportable. The 
anguish he suffered from her loss is distinctly recalled by 
many persons stiU living, who visited the family at that 
time in Salem. 

I first saw Hawthorne when he was about thirty-five 
years old. He had then published a collection of his 
sketches, the now famous " Twice-Told Tales." Longfel- 
low, ever alert for what is exceUent^ and eager to do a 



48 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

brother author opportune and substantial service, at once 
came before the public with a generous estimate of the 
work in the North American Review ; but the choice little 
volume, the most promising addition to American litera- 
ture that had appeared for many years, made little impres- 
sion on the public mind. Discerning readers, however, 
recognized the supreme beauty in this new writer, and 
they never afterwards lost sight of him. 

In 1828 Hawthorne published a short anonymous 
romance called Fanshawe. I once asked him about this 
disowned publication, and he spoke of it with great dis- 
gust, and afterwards he thus referred to the subject in a 
letter written to me in 1851: "You make an inquiry 
about some supposed former publication of mine. I can- 
not be sworn to make correct answers as to all the lit- 
erary or other follies of my nonage ; and I earnestly 
recommend you not to brush away the dust that may 
have gathered over them. Whatever might do me credit 
you may be pretty sure I should be ready enough to 
bring forward. Anything else it is our mutual interest 
to conceal ; and so far from assisting your researches in 
that direction, I especially enjoin it on you, my dear 
friend, not to read any unacknowledged page that you 
may suppose to be mine." 

When Mr. George Bancroft, then Collector of the Port 
of Boston, appointed Hawthorne weigher and ganger in 
the custom-house, he did a wise thing, for no public officer 
ever performed his disagreeable duties better than our 
romancer. Here is a tattered little official document 
signed by Hawthorne when he was watching over the 
interests of the country : it certifies his attendance at the 
unlading of a brig, then lying at Long Wharf in Boston. I 
keep this precious relic side by side with one of a similar 
custom-house character, signed Bobert Burns. 

I came to know Hawthorne very intimately after the 



HAWTHORNE. 49 

Wliigs displaced the Democratic romancer from office. In 
my ardent desire to have him retained in the public service, 
his salary at tliat time being his sole dependence, — not 
foreseeing that his withdrawal from that sort of employ- 
ment would be the best thing for American letters that 
could possibly happen, — I called, in his behalf, on several 
influential politicians of the day, and well remember the 
rebuffs I received in my enthusiasm for the author of the 
" Twice-Told Tales." One pompous little gentleman in 
authority, after hearing my appeal, quite astounded me 
by his ignorance of the claims of a literary man on his 
country. " Yes, yes," he sarcastically croaked dowTi his 
public turtle-fed throat, "I see through it all, I see tln:ough 
it ; this Hawthorne is one of them 'ere visionists, and we 
don't want no such a man as him round." So the " vis- 
ionist " was not allowed to remain in office, and the coun- 
try was better served by him in another way. In the 
winter of 1849, after he had been ejected from the custom- 
house, I went down to Salem to see him and inquire after 
his health, for we heard he had been suffering from illness. 
He was then living in a modest wooden house in Mall 
Street, if I remember rightly the location. I found him 
alone in a chamber over the sitting-room of the dweUing ; 
and as the day was cold, he was hovering near a stove. 
We fell into talk about his future prospects, and he was, 
as I feared I should find him, in a very desponding mood. 
" Now," said I, " is the time for you to publish, for I know 
during these years in Salem you must have got sometliing 
ready for the press." " Nonsense," said he ; " what heart 
had I to write anything, when my publishers (M. and 
Company) have been so many years trying to sell a small 
edition of the ' Twice-Told Tales ' ? " I still pressed upon 
him the good chances he would have now with something 
new. " Who would risk publishing a book for me, the most 
unpopular writer in America ? " "I would," said I, " and 

3 D 



50 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

would start with an edition of two thousand copies of 
anything you write." " What madness ! " he exclaimed ; 
" your friendship for me gets the better of your judgment. 
No, no," he continued ; " I have no money to indemnify a 
publisher's losses on my account." I looked at my watch 
and found that the train would soon be starting for Boston, 
and I knew there was not much time to lose in trying to 
discover what had been his literary work during these last 
few years in Salem. I remember that I pressed him to 
reveal to me what he had been writing. He shook his 
head and gave me to understand he had produced nothing. 
At that moment I caught sight of a bureau or set of 
drawers near where we were sitting ; and immediately it 
occurred to me that hidden away somewhere in that article 
of furniture was a story or stories by the author of the 
" Twice-Told Tales," and I became so positive of it that I 
charged him vehemently with the fact. He seemed sur- 
prised, I thought, but shook his head again ; and I rose to 
take my leave, begging him not to come into the cold entry, 
saying I would come back and see him again in a few 
days. I was hurrying down the stairs when he called 
after me from the chamber, asking me to stop a moment. 
Then quickly stepping into the entry with a roll of manu- 
script in his hands, he said : " How in Heaven's name did 
you know this thing was there ? As you have found me 
out, take what I have written, and tell me, after you get 
home and have time to read it, if it is good for anything. 
It is either very good or very bad, — I don't know which." 
On my way up to Boston I read the germ of " The Scarlet 
Letter " ; before I slept that night I wrote him a note all 
aglow with admiration of the marvellous story he had put 
into my hands, and told him that I would come again 
to Salem the next day and arrange for its publication. I 
went on in such an amazing state of excitement when we 
met again in the little house, that he would not believe I 



HAWTHORNE. 51 

was really in earnest. He seemed to think I was beside 
myself, and laughed sadly at my enthusiasm. However, 
we soon arranged for his appearance again before the pub- 
lic with a book. 

This quarto volume before me contains numerous letters, 
written by him from 1850 down to the month of his death. 
The first one refers to " The Scarlet Letter," and is dated 
in January, 1850. At my suggestion he had altered the 
plan of that story. It was his intention to make " The 
Scarlet Letter" one of several short stories, all to be in- 
cluded in one volume, and to be called 

OLD-TIME LEGENDS: 

TOGETHER WITH SKETCHES, 

EXPEKIMENTAL AND IDEAL. 

His first design was to make "The Scarlet Letter" occupy 
about two hundred pages in his new book ; but I per- 
suaded him, after reading the first chapters of the story, 
to elaborate it, and publish it as a separate work. After 
it was settled that " The Scarlet Letter " should be en- 
larged and printed by itself in a volume he wrote to 
me: — 

" I am truly glad that you like the Introduction, for I was rather 
afraid that it might appear absurd and impertinent to be talliing 
about myself, when nobody, that I know of, has requested any 
information on that subject. 

" As regards the size of the book, I have been thinking a good 
deal about it. Considered merely as a matter of taste and beauty, 
the form of publication which you recommend seems to me much 
preferable to that of the ' Mosses.' 

" In the present case, however, I have some doubts of the expedi- 
ency, because, if the book is made up entirely of ' The Scarlet 
Letter,' it will be too sombre. I found it impossible to relieve the 
shadows of the story with so much light as I would gladly have 
thrown in. Keeping so close to its point as the tale does, and 
diversified no otherwise than by turning different sides of the same 
dark idea to the reader's eye, it will weary very many people and 



52 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

disgust some. Is it safe, then, to stake the fate of the book 
entirely on this one chance ? A hunter loads his gun with a bullet 
and several buckshot ; and, following his sagacious example, it was 
my purpose to conjoin the one long story with half a dozen shorter 
ones, so tliat, failing to kill the public outright with my biggest and 
heaviest lump of lead, I might have other chances with the smaller 
bits, individually and in the aggregate. However, I am willing to 
leave these considerations to your judgment, and should not be sorry 
to have you decide for the separate publication. 

" In this latter event it appears to me that the only proper title 
for the book would be ' The Scarlet Letter,' for ' The Custom-House ' 
is merely introductory, — an entrance-hall to the magnificent edifice 
which I throw open to my guests. It would be funny if, seeing the 
further passages so dark and dismal, they should all choose to stop 
there ! If ' The Scarlet Letter ' is to be the title, would it not be 
well to print it on the title-page in red ink ? I am not quite sure 
about the good taste of so doing, but it would certainly be piquant 
and appropriate, and, I tliink, attractive to the great guU whom we 
are endeavoring to circumvent." 

One beautiful summer day, twenty years ago, I found 
Hawthorne in his little red cottage at Lenox, surrounded 
by his happy young family. He had the look, as some- 
body said, of a banished lord, and his grand figure among 
the hills of Berkshire seemed finer than ever. His boy and 
girl were swinging on the gate as we drove up to his door, 
and with their sunny curls formed an attractive feature in 
the landscape. As the afternoon was cool and delightful, 
we proposed a drive over to Pittsfield to see Holmes, who 
was then living on his ancestral farm. Hawthorne was 
in a cheerful condition, and seemed to enjoy the beauty 
of the day to the utmost. Next morning we were aU in- 
vited by Mr. Dudley Field, then living at Stockbridge, 
to ascend Monument Mountain. Holmes, Hawthorne, 
Duyckinck, Herman Melville, Headley, Sedgwick, Mat- 
thews, and several ladies, were of the party. We scram- 
bled to the top with great spirit, and when we arrived, 
Melville, I remember, bestrode a peaked rock, which ran 



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HA WTHORNE. 53 

out like a bowsprit, and pulled and hauled imaginary- 
ropes for our delectation. Then we all assembled in a 
shady spot, and one of the party read to us Bryant's 
beautiful poem commemorating Monument ]\Iountain. 
Then we lunched among the rocks, and somebody pro- 
posed Bryant's health, and "long life to the dear old 
poet." This was the most popidar toast of the day, and 
it took, I remember, a considerable quantity of Heidsieck 
to do it justice. In the afternoon, pioneered by Headley, 
we made our way, with merry shouts and laughter, 
through the Ice-Glen. Hawthorne was among the most 
enterprising of the merry-makers ; and being in the dark 
much of the time, he ventured to call out lustily and 
pretend that certain destruction was inevitable to all 
of us. After tliis extemporaneous jollity, we dined to- 
gether at Mr. Dudley Field's in Stockbridge, and Haw- 
thorne rayed out in a sparkling and unwonted manner. 
I remember the conversation at table chiefly ran on the 
physical differences between the present American and 
English men, Hawthorne stoutly taking part in favor of 
the American. This 5th of August was a happy day 
throughout, and I never saw Hawthorne in better spirits. 
Often and often I have seen him sitting in the chair I 
am now occupying by the window, looking out into the 
twilight. He liked to watch the vessels dropping down 
the stream, and nothing pleased him more than to go on 
board a newly arrived bark from Down East, as she was 
just moored at the wharf. One night we made the 
acquaintance of a cabin-boy on board a brig, Avhom we 
found off duty and reading a large subscription volume, 
which proved, on inquiry, to be a Commentary on the 
Bible. "When Hawthorne questioned him why he was 
reading, then and there, that particular book, he replied 
with a knowing wink at both of us, " There 's consider- 
'ble her'sy in our place, and I 'm a studying up for 'em." 



54 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

He liked on Sunday to mouse about among tlie books, 
and there are few volumes in this room that he has not 
handled or read. He knew he could have unmolested 
habitation here, whenever he chose to come, and he was 
never allowed to be annoyed by intrusion of any kind. 
He always slept in the same room, — the one looking on 
the water; and many a night I have heard his solemn 
footsteps over my head, long after the rest of the house 
had gone to sleep. Like many other nervous men of 
genius, he was a light sleeper, and he liked to be up and 
about early; but it was only for a ramble among the 
books again. One summer morning I found him as early 
as four o'clock reading a favorite poem, on Solitude, a 
piece he very much admired. That morning I shall not 
soon forget, for he was in the vein for autobiographical 
talk, and he gave me a most interesting account of his 
father, the sea-captain, who died of the yellow-fever in 
Surinam in 1808, and of his beautiful mother, who dwelt 
a secluded mourner ever after the death of her husband. 
Then he told stories of his college life, and of his one 
sole intimate, Franklin Pierce, whom he loved devotedly 
his life long. 

In the early period of our acquaintance he much affected 
the old Boston Exchange Coffee-House in Devonshire 
Street, and once I remember to have found him shut up 
there before a blazing coal-fire, in the " tumultuous pri- 
vacy " of a great snow-storm, reading with apparent in- 
terest an obsolete copy of the " Old Farmer's Almanac," 
which he had picked up about the house. He also de- 
lighted in the Old Province House, at that time an inn, 
kept by one Thomas Waite, whom he has immortalized. 
After he was chosen a member of the Saturday Club he 
came frequently to dinner with Felton, Longfellow, 
Holmes, and the rest of his friends, who assembled once 
a month to dine together. At the table, on these occa- 



HAWTHORNE. 55 

sions, he was rather reticent than conversational, but 
when he chose to talk it was observed that the best 
things said that day came from him. 

As I turn over his letters, the old days, delightful to 
recall, come back again with added interest. 

" I sha' n't have the new story," he says in one of them, dated from 
Lenox on the 1st of October, 1850, " ready by Novembei-, for I am 
never good for anything in the Hterary way till after the first autum- 
nal frost, which has somewhat such an effect on my imagination 
that it does on the foliage here about me, — multiplying and bright- 
2ning its hues; though they are likely to be sober and shabby 
enough after all. 

" I am beginning to puzzle myself about a title for the book. 
The scene of it is in one of those old projecting-storied houses, fa- 
miliar to my eye in Salem ; and the story, horrible to say, is a httle 
less than two hundred years long ; though all but thirty or forty 
pages of it refer to the present time. I think of such titles as ' The 
House of the Seven G-ables,' there being that number of gable-ends 
to the old shanty ; or ' The Seven-G-abled House ' ; or simply ' The 
Seven G-ables.' Tell me how these strike you. It appears to me 
that the latter is rather the best, and has the great advantage that 
it would puzzle the Devil to teU what it means." 

A month afterwards he writes further with regard to 
" The House of the Seven Gables," concerning the title to 
which he was still in a quandary: — 

" ' The Old Pyncheon House : A Romance ' ; ' The Old Pyncheon 
Family ; or the House of the Seven Gables : A Romance ' ; — choose 
between them. I have rather a distaste to a double title ? other- 
wise, I think I should prefer the second. Is it any matter under 
which title it is announced ? If a better should occur hereafter, we 
can substitute. Of these two, on the whole, I judge the first to 
be the better. 

" I write diligently, but not so rapidly as I had hoped. I find the 
book requires more care and thought than ' The Scarlet Letter ' ; 
also I have to wait oftener for a mood. * The Scarlet Letter ' being 
all in one tone, I had only to get my pitch, and could then go on inter- 
minably. Many passages of this book ought to be finished with the 
minuteness of a Dutch picture, in order to give them their proper 
effect. Sometimes, when tired of it, it strikes me that the whole is 



56 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

an absurdity, from beginning to end; but the fact is, in writing a ro- 
mance, a man is always, or always ought to be, careering on the utmost 
verge of a precipitous absurdity, and the skiU lies in coining as close 
as possible, without actually tumbUng over. My prevailing idea is, 
that the book ought to succeed better than ' The Scailet Letter,' 
though I have no idea that it wilL" 

On the 9tli of December he was still at work on the 
new romance, and writes : — 

"My desire and prayer is to get through with the business in 
hand. I have been in a Slough of Despond for some days past, 
having written so fiercely that I came to a stand-still. There are 
points where a writer gets bewildered and cannot form any judg- 
ment of what he has done, or tell what to do next. In these cases 
it is best to keep quiet." 

On the 12th of January, I80I, he is still busy over his 
new book, and writes : " My ' House of the Seven Gables ' 
is, so to speak, finished ; only I am hammering away 
a little on the roof, and doing up a few odd jobs, that 
were left incomplete.' At the end of the month the 
manuscript of his second great romance was put into the 
hands of the expressman at Lenox, by Hawthorne him- 
self, to be delivered to me. On the 27th he writes : — 

" If you do not soon receive it, you may conclude that it has 
miscarried ; in which case, I shall not consent to the universe exist- 
ing a moment longer. I have no copy of it, except the wildest 
scribble of a first draught, so that it could never be restored. 

" It has met with extraordinary success from that portion of the 
public to whose judgment it has been submitted, viz. from my wife. 
I likewise prefer it to ' The Scarlet Letter ' ; but an author's opinion 
of his book just after completing it is worth little or nothing, he 
being then in the hot or cold fit of a fever, and certain to rate it too 
high or too low. 

" It has undoubtedly one disadvantage in being brought so close 
to the present time ; whereby its romantic improbabiUties become 
more glaring. 

" I deem it indispensable that the proof-sheets should be sent me 
for correction. It will cause some delay, no doubt, but probably 
not much more than if I lived in Salem. At all events, I don't see 
bow it can be helped. My autography is sometimes villanously blind ; 



HAWTHORNE. 57 

and it is odd enough that whenever the printers do mistake a word, 
it is just the very jewel of a word, worth all the rest of the dic- 
tionary." 

I well remember with what anxiety I awaited the ar- 
rival of the expressman with the precious parcel, and 
with what keen delight I read every word of the new 
story before I slept. Here is the original manuscript, 
just as it came that day, twenty years ago, fresh from the 
author's hand. The printers carefully preserved it for 
me ; and Hawthorne once made a formal presentation of 
it, with great mock solemnity, in this very room where 
I am now sitting. 

After the book came out he wrote : — 

" I have by no means an inconvenient multitude of friends ; but 
if they ever do appear a little too numerous, it is when I am mak- 
ing a list of those to whom presentation copies are to be sent. 
Please send one to G-eneral Pierce, Horatio Bridge, R. W. Emerson, 
"W. E. Channing, Longfellow, Hillard, Sumner, Holmes, Lowell, and 
Thompson the artist. You wiU yourself give one to Whipple, 
whereby I shall make a saving. I presume you won't put the por- 
trait into the book. It appears to me an improper accompaniment to 
a new work. Nevertheless, if it be ready, I should be glad to ha'.e 
each of these presentation copies accompanied by a copy of the en- 
graving put loosely between the leaves. Grood by. I must now 
trudge two miles to the village, through rain and mud knee-deep, 
after that accursed proof-sheet. The book reads very well in proofs, 
but I don't believe it will take like the former one. The pre- 
Uminary chapter was what gave ' The Scarlet Letter ' its vogue." 

The engraving he refers to in this letter was made 
from a portrait by Mr. C. G. Thompson, and at that time, 
1851, was an admirable likeness. On the 6th of March 
he writes : — 

" The package, with my five heads, arrived yesterday afternoon, 
and we are truly obliged to you for putting so many at our disposal. 
They are admirably done. The children recognized their venerable 
sire with great delight. My wife complains somewhat of a want of 
cheerfulness in the face ; and, to say the truth, it does appear to be 
afflicted with a bedevilled melancholy ; but it wiU do all the better 

3» 



58 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

for the author of ' The Scarlet Letter.' In the expression there is a 
singular resemblance (which I do not remember in Thompson's pic- 
ture) to a miniature of my father." 

His letters to me, during the summer of 1851, were 
frequent and sometimes quite long. " The House of the 
Seven Gables " was warmly welcomed, both at home and 
abroad. On the 23d of May he writes : — 

"Whipple's notices have done more than pleased me, for they 
have helped me to see my book. Much of the censure I recognize 
as just; I wish I could feel the praise to be so fully deserved. 
Being better (which I insist it is) than ' The Scarlet Letter,' I have 
never expected it to be so popular (this steel pen makes me write 
awfully). Esq., of Boston, has written to me, complain- 
ing that I have made his grandfather infamous I It seems there was 
actually a Pyncheon (or Pynchon, as he spells it) family resident in 
Salem, and that their representative, at the period of the Revolu- 
tion, was a certain Judge Pynchon, a Tory and a refugee. This was 

Mr. 's grandfather, and (at least, so he dutifully describes him) 

the most exemplary old gentleman in the world. There are several 
touches in my account of the Pyncheons which, he says, make it 
probable that I had this actual family in my eye, and he considers 
himself infinitely wronged and aggrieved, and thinks it monstrous 
that the ' virtuous dead ' cannot be suflfered to rest quietly in their 
graves. He further complains that I speak disrespectfully of the 

's in G-randfather's Chair. He writes more in sorrow than in 

anger, though there is quite enough of the latter quality to give 
piquancy to his epistle. The joke of the matter is, that I never 
heard of his grandfather, nor knew that any Pyncheons had ever 
lived in Salem, but took the name because it suited the tone of 
my book, and was as much my property, for fictitious purposes, as 
that of Smith, I have pacified him by a very polite and gentle- 
manly letter, and if ever you publish any more of the Seven G-ables, 
I should like to write a brief preface, expressive of my anguish for 
this unintentional wrong, and making the best reparation possible ; 
else these wretched old Pyncheons will have no peace in the other 

world, nor in this. Furthermore, there is a Rev. Mr. , resident 

within four miles of me, and a cousin of Mr. , who states that he 

likewise is highly indignant. Who would have dreamed of claim- 
ants starting up for such an inheritance as the House of the Seven 
Gables 1 



HAWTHORNE. 59 

" I mean to write, within six weeks or two months next ensuing, 
a book of stories made up of classical myths. The subjects are : 
The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch, Pandora's Box, The 
Adventure of Hercules in quest of the G-olden Apples, Bellerophon 
and the Chimera, Baucis and Philemon, Perseus and Medusa ; these, 
I think, will be enough to make up a volume. As a framework, I 
shall have a young college student telling these stories to his cousins 
and brothers and sisters, during his vacations, sometimes at the fire- 
side, sometimes in the woods and dells. Unless I greatly mistake, 
these old fictions will work up admirably for the purpose ; and I 
shall aim at substituting a tone in some degree Gothic or romantic, 
or any such tone as may best please myself, instead of the classic 
coldness, which is as repellant as the touch of marble. 

" I give you these hints of my plan, because you will perhaps 
think it advisable to employ Billings to prepare some illustrations. 
There is a good scope in the above subjects for fanciful designs. 
Bellerophon and the Chimera, for instance : the Chimera a fantastic 
monster with three heads, and Bellerophon fighting him, mounted 
on Pegasus ; Pandora opening the box ; Hercules talking with Atlas, 
an enormous giant who holds the sky on his shoulders, or saiUng across 
the sea in an immense bowl ; Perseus transforming a king and all 
his subjects to stone, by exhibiting the Gorgon's head. No particu- 
lar accuracy in costume need be aimed at. My stories will bear out 
the artist in any liberties he may be inchned to take. Billings 
would do these things well enough, though his characteristics are 
grace and delicacy rather than wildness of fancy. The book, if it 
comes out of my mind as I see it now, ought to have pretty wide 
success amongst young people ; and, of course, I shall purge out all the 
old heathen wickedness, and put in a moral wherever practicable. 
For a title how would this do : ' A Wonder-Book for Girls and 
Boys ' ; or, ' The Wonder-Book of Old Stories ' ? I prefer the 
former. Or ' Myths Modernized for my Children ' ; that won't do. 

" I need a little change of scene, and meant to have come to Boston 
and elsewhere before writing this book ; but I cannot leave home 
at present." 

Throughout the summer Hawthorne was constantly 
worried by people who insisted that they, or their 
families in the present or past generations, had been 
deeply wronged in " The House of the Seven Gables." 
In a note, received from him on the 5th of June, he 
aays : — 



6o YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. . 

" I have just received a letter from still another claimant of the 
Pyncheon estate. I wonder if ever, and how soon, I shall get & 
just estimate of how many jackasses there are in this ridiculous 
world. My correspondent, by the way, estimates the number of these 
Pyncheon jackasses at about twenty ; I am doubtless to h» remon- 
strated with by each individual. After exchanging shots with all of 
them, I shall get you to publish the whole correspondence, in a style 
to match that of my other works, and I anticipate a great run for the 
volume, 

'■ P. S. My last correspondent demands that another name ba 
substituted, instead of that of the family ; to which I assent, in case 
the publishers can be prevailed on to cancel the stereotype plate* 
Of course you will consent ! Pray do I " 

Praise now poured in upon "him from all quarters. 

Hosts of critics, both in England and America,, gallantly 

came forward to do him service, and his fame was as- 

'sured. On the 15th of July he sends me a jubilant letter 

from Lenox, from which I will copy several passages : — 

" Mrs. Kemble writes very good accounts from London of the 
reception my two romances have met with there. She says they 
have made a greater sensation than any book since ' Jane Eyre ' ; 
but probably she is a little or a good deal too emphatic in her repre- 
sentation of the matter. At any rate, she advises that the sheets of 
any future book be sent to Moxon, and such an arrangement made 
that a copyright may be secured in England as well as here. Could 
this be done with the Wonder-Book ? And do you think it would 
be worth while ? I must see the proof-sheets of this book. It is a 
cursed bore ; for I want to be done with it from this moment. Can't 
you arrange it so that two or three or more sheets may be sent at 
once, on stated days, and so my journeys to the village be fewer ? 

" That review which you sent me is a remarkable production. 
There is praise enough to satisfy a greedier author than myself. I 
set it aside, as not being able to estimate how far it is deserved. 
I can better judge of the censure, much of which is undoubtedly 
just ; and I shall profit by it if I can. But, after all, there would be 
no great use in attempting it. There are weeds enough in my mind, 
to be sure, and I might pluck them up by the handful ; but in so 
doing I should root up the few flowers along with them. It is also 
to be considered, that what one man calls weeds another classifies 
among the choicest flowers in the garden. But this reviewer ia 



HAWTHORNE. 6i 

certainly a man of sense, and sometimes tickles me under the fifth 
rib. I beg you to observe, however, that I do not acknowledge his 
justice in cutting and slashing among the characters of the two 
books at the rate he does ; sparing nobody, I think, except Pearl 
and Phoebe. Yet I think he is right as to my tendency as respects 
individual character. 

" I am going to begin to enjoy the summer now, and to read fool- 
ish novels, if I can get any, and smoke cigars, and think of nothing 
at all ; which is equivalent to thinking of all manner of things." 

The composition of the " Tanglewood Tales " gave him 
pleasant employment, and all his letters, during the period 
he was writing them, overflow with evidences of his fe- 
licitous mood. He requests that Bilhngs should pay espe- 
cial attention to the drawings, and is anxious that the 
porch of Tanglewood should be "well supplied with 
shrubbery." He seemed greatly pleased that Mary Eus- 
seU Mitford had fallen in with his books and had written 
to me about them. " Her sketches," he said, "long ago as 
I read them, are as sweet in my memory as the scent of 
new hay." On the 18th of August he writes : — 

" You are going to publish another thousand of the Seven G-ables. 
I promised those Pyncheons a preface. What if you insert the 
following ? 

" (The author is pained to learn that, in selecting a name for the 
fictitious inhabitants of a castle in the air, he has wounded the 
feelings of more than one respectable descendant of an old Pyncheon 
famUy. He begs leave to say that he intended no reference to any 
individual of the name, now or heretofore extant ; and further, that, 
at the time of writing his book, he was wholly unaware of the 
existence of such a family in New England for two hundred years 
back, and that whatever he may have since learned of them is 
altogether to their credit.) 

" Insert it or not, as you like. I have done with the matter." 

I adAdsed him to let the Pyncheons rest as they were, 
and omit any addition, either as note or preface, to the 
romance. 

Near the close of 1851 his health seemed unsettled; 
and he asked me to look over certain proofs " carefully," 



62 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

for he did not feel well enough to manage them himseH 
In one of his notes, written from Lenox at that time^ 
he says : — 

" Please God, I mean to look you in the face towards the end of 
next week ; at aU events, within ten days. I have stayed here too 
long and too constantly. To tell you a secret, I am sick to death of 
Berkshire, and hate to think of spending another winter here. But 
I must. The air and climate do not agree with my health at all ; and, 
for the first time since I was a boy, I have felt languid and dispirited 
during almost my whole residence here. that Providence would 
build me the merest little shanty, and mark me out a rood or two 
of garden-ground, near the sea-coast. I thank you for the two vol- 
umes of De Quincey. If it were not for your kindness in supplying 
me with books now and then, I should quite forget how to read." 

Hawthorne was a hearty devourer of books, and in 
certain moods of mind it made very little difference what 
the volume before him happened to be. An old play 
or an old newspaper sometimes gave him wondrous 
great content, and he would ponder the sleepy, uninter- 
esting sentences as if they contained immortal mental 
aliment. He once told me he found such delight in old 
advertisements in the newspaper files at the Boston 
Athenaeum, that he had passed delicious hours among 
them. At other times he was very fastidious, and threw 
aside book after book until he found the right one. De 
Quincey was a special favorite with him, and the Ser- 
mons of Laurence Sterne he once commended to me as 
the best sermons ever written. In his library was an early 
copy of Sir Philip Sidney's " Arcadia," which had floated 
down to him from a remote ancestry, and which he had 
read so industriously for forty years that it was nearly 
worn out of its thick leathern cover. Hearing him say 
once that the old English State Trials were enchanting 
reading, and knowing that he did not possess a copy of 
those heavy folios, I picked up a set one day in a book- 
shop and sent them to him. He often told me that 



HAWTHORNE. 63 

he spent more hours over them and got more delectation 
out of them than tongue could tell, and he said, if five 
lives were vouchsafed to him, he could employ them all in 
writing stories out of those books. He had sketched, in 
his mind, several romances founded on the remarkable 
trials reported in the ancient volumes ; and one day, I 
remember, he made my blood tingle by relating some of 
the situations he intended, if his life was spared, to weave 
into future romances. Sir Walter Scott's novels he con- 
tinued almost to worship, and was accustomed to read 
them aloud in his family. The novels of G. P. E. James, 
both the early and the later ones, he insisted were admi- 
rable stories, admirably told, and he had high praise to 
bestow on the works of Anthony Trollope. " Have you 
ever read these novels ? " he wrote to me in a letter from 
England, some time before Trollope began to be much 
known in America. " They precisely suit my taste ; 
solid and substantial, written on the strength of beef and 
through the inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some 
giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it 
under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about 
their daily business and not suspecting that they were 
made a show of. And these books are as English as a 
beefsteak. Have they ever been tried in America ? It 
needs an English residence to make them thoroughly 
comprehensible ; but still I should think that the human 
nature in them would give them success anywhere." 

I have often been asked if all his moods were som- 
bre, and if he was never jolly sometimes like other peo- 
ple. Indeed he was ; and although the humorous side 
of Hawthorne was not easily or often discoverable, yet 
have I seen him marvellously moved to fun, and no man 
laughed more heartily in his way over a good story. Wise 
and witty H , in whom wisdom and wit are so in- 
grained that age only increases his subtile spirit, and greatly 



64 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

enhances the power of his cheerful temperament, always 
had the talismanic faculty of breaking up that thought- 
fully sad face into mirthful waves ; and I remember how 
Hawthorne writhed with hilarious dehght over Professor 

L 's account of a butcher who remarked that " Idees 

had got afloat in the public mind with respect to sassin- 
gers." I once told him of a young woman who brought 
in a manuscript, and said, as she placed it in my hands, 
" I don't know what to do with myself sometimes, I 'm so 
filled with mammoth thoughts." A series of convulsive 
efforts to suppress explosive laughter followed, which I 
remember to this day. 

He had an inexhaustible store of amusing anecdotes to 
relate of people and things he had observed on the road. 
One day he described to me, in his inimitable and quietly 
ludicrous manner, being watched, while on a visit to a 
distant city, by a friend who called, and thought he needed 
a protector, his health being at that time not so good as 
usual. "He stuck by me," said Hawthorne, "as if he 
were afraid to leave me alone ; he stayed past the dinner 
hour, and when I began to wonder if he never took meals 
himself, he departed and set another man to watch me 
till he should return. That man watched me so, in his 
unwearying kindness, that when I left the house I forgot 
half my luggage, and left behind, among other things, a 
beautiful pair of slippers. They watched me so, among 
them, I swear to you I forgot nearly everything I owned." 



Hawthorne is still looking at me in his far-seeing way, 
as if he were pondering what was next to be said about 
him. It would not displease him, I know, if I were to 
begin my discursive talk to-day by telling a little incident 
connected with a famous American poem. 

Hawthorne dined one day with Longfellow, and brought 



HA WTHORNE. 65 

with him a friend from Salem. After dinner the friend 
said : " I have been trying to persuade Hawthorne to 
write a story, based upon a legend of Acadie, and still 
current there ; a legend of a girl who, in the dispersion of 
the Acadians, was separated from her lover, and passed 
her life in waiting and seeking for Mm, and only found 
him dying in a hospital, when both were old." Longfellow 
wondered that this legend did not strike the fancy of 
Hawthorne, and said to him : " If you have really made 
up your mind not to use it for a story, will you give it 
to me for a poem ? " To this Hawthorne assented, and 
moreover promised not to treat the subject in prose tiU 
Longfellow had seen what he could do with it in verse. 
And so we have " Evangeline " in beautiful hexameters, 
— a poem that will hold its place in literature while 
true affection lasts. Hawthorne rejoiced in this great suc- 
cess of Longfellow, and loved to count up the editions, 
both foreign and American, of this now world-renowned 
poem. 

I have lately met an early friend of Hawthorne's, older 
than himself, who knew him intimately all his life long, 
and I have learned some additional facts about his youthr 
ful days. Soon after he left college he wrote some stories 
which he called " Seven Tales of my Native Land." The 
motto which he chose for the title-page was " We are 
Seven," from Wordsworth. My informant read the tales 
in manuscript, and says some of them were very striking, 
particularly one or two Witch Stories. As soon as the 
little book was well prepared for the press he deliberately 
threw it into the fire, and sat by to see its destruction. 

When about fourteen he wrote out for a member of his 
family a list of the books he had at that time been 
reading. The catalogue was a long one, but my informant 
remembers that The Waverley Novels, Kousseau's Works, 
and The Newgate Calender were among them. Serious 



66 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

remonstrances were made by the family touching the 
perusal of this last work, but he persisted in going through 
it to the end. He had an objection in his boyhood 
to reading much that was called " true and useful." Of 
history in general he was not very fond, but he read Frois- 
sart with interest, and Clarendon's History of the Eebel- 
lion. He is remembered to have said at that time " he cared 
very little for the history of the world before the four- 
teenth century." After he left college he read a great deal of 
French literature, especially the works of Voltaire and his 
contemporaries. He rarely went into the streets during 
the daytime, unless there was to be a gathering of the 
people for some pubhc purpose, such as a political meeting, 
a military muster, or a fire. A great conflagration attracted 
him in a peculiar manner, and he is remembered, while a 
young man in Salem, to have been often seen looking on, 
from some dark corner, while the fire was raging. When 
General Jackson, of whom he professed himself a partisan, 
visited Salem in 1833, he walked out to the boundary of 
the town to meet him, — not to speak to him, but only to 
look at him. When he came home at night he said he 
found only a few men and boys collected, not enough 
people, without the assistance he rendered, to welcome the 
General with a good cheer. It is said that Susan, in the 
"Village Uncle," one of the "Twice-Told Tales," is not 
altogether a creation of his fancy. Her father was a 
fisherman living in Salem, and Hawthorne was constantly 
telling the members of his family how charming she was, 
and he always spoke of her as his " mermaid." He said 
she had a great deal of what the French call espQglerie. 
There was another young beauty, living at that time in 
his native town, quite captivating to him, though in a 
different style from the mermaid. But if his head and 
heart were turned in his youth by these two nymphs in 
his native town, there was soon a transfer of his affections 



HAWTHORNE. 67 

to quite another direction. His new passion was a much 
more permanent one, for now there dawned upon him so 
perfect a creature that he fell in love irrevocably ; aU his 
thoughts and all his delights centred in her, who suddenly 
became indeed the mistress of his soul. She filled the 
measure of his being, and became a part and parcel of 
his life. Who was this mysterious young person that 
had crossed his boyhood's path and made him hers 
forever ? Whose daughter was she that could thus 
enthrall the ardent young man in Salem, who knew as 
yet so little of the world and its sirens ? She is 
described by one who met her long before Hawthorne 
made her acquaintance as " the prettiest low-born lass 
that ever ran on the greensward," and she must have 
been a radiant child of beauty, indeed, that girl ! She 
danced like a fairy, she sang exquisitely, so that every 
one who knew her seemed amazed at her perfect way of 
doing everything she attempted. Who was it that thus 
summoned all this witchery, making such a tumult in 
young Hawthorne's bosom ? She was " daughter to 
Leontes and Hermione," king and queen of Sicilia, and 
her name was Perdita ! It was Shakespeare who intro- 
duced Hawthorne to his first real love, and the lover 
never forgot his mistress. He was constant ever, and 
worshipped her through life. Beauty always captivated 
him. Where there was beauty he fancied other good 
gifts must naturally be in possession. During his child- 
hood homeliness was always repulsive to him. When a 
little boy he is remembered to have said to a woman who 
wished to be kind to him, " Take her away ! She is ugly 
and fat, and has a loud voice." 

When quite a young man he applied for a situation 
under Commodore Wilkes on the Exploring Expedition, 
but did not succeed in obtaining an appointment. He 
thought this a great misfortune, as he was fond of travel. 



68 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and lie promised to do all sorts of wonderful thingSj, 
should he be allowed to join the voyagers. 

One very odd but characteristic notion of his, when a 
youth, was, that he should like a competent income which 
should neither increase nor diminish, for then, he said, it 
would not engross too much of his attention. Surrey's 
little poem, " The Means to obtain a Happy Life," ex- 
pressed exactly what his idea of happiness was when a 
lad. When a school-boy he wrote verses for the news- 
papers, but he ignored their existence in after years with 
a smile of droll disgust. One of his quatrains lives in 
the memory of a friend, who repeated it to me recently : — 

" The ocean hath its silent caves. 
Deep, quiet, and alone ; 
Above them there are troubled waves, 
Beneath them there are none." 

When the Atlantic Cable was first laid, somebody, not 
knowing the author of the lines, quoted them to Haw- 
thorne as applicable to the calmness said to exist in the 
depths of the ocean. He listened to the verse, and then 
laughingly observed, " I know something of the deep sea 
myseK." 

In 1836 he went to Boston, I am told, to edit the 
"American Magazine of Useful Knowledge," for which 
he was to be paid a salary of six hundred dollars a year. 
The proprietors soon became insolvent, so that he received 
nothing, but he kept on just the same as if he had been 
paid regularly. The plan of the work proposed by the 
publishers of the magazine admitted no fiction into its 
pages. The magazine was printed on coarse paper and was 
illustrated by engravings painful to look at. There were 
no contributors except the editor, and he wrote the whole 
of every number. Short biographical sketches of emi- 
nent men and historical narratives filled up its pages. I 
have examined the columns of this deceased magazine, and 



HAWTHORNE. 69 

read Hawthorne's narrative of Mrs. Dustan's captivity. 
Mrs. Dustan was carried off by the Indians from Haver- 
hill, and Hawthorne does not much commiserate the hard- 
ships she endured, but reserves his sympathy for her hus- 
band, who was not carried into captivity, and suffered 
nothing from the Indians, but who, he says, was a tender- 
hearted man, and took care of the children during Mrs. 
D.'s absence from home, and probably knew that his wife 
would be more than a match for a whole tribe of savages. 

When the Eev. Mr. Cheever was knocked down and 
flogged in the streets of Salem and then imprisoned, 
Hawthorne came out of his retreat and visited him regu- 
larly in jail, showing strong sympathy for the man and 
great indignation for those who had maltreated him. 

Those early days in Salem, — how interesting the 
memory of them must be to the friends who knew and 
followed the gentle dreamer in his budding career ! 
When the whisper first came to the timid boy, in that 
" dismal chamber in Union Street," that he too possessed 
the soul of an artist, there were not many about him to 
share the divine rapture that must have filled his proud 
young heart. Outside of his own little family circle, 
doubting and desponding eyes looked upon him, and 
many a stupid head wagged in derision as he passed by. 
But there was always waiting for him a sweet and honest 
welcome by the pleasant hearth where his mother and 
sisters sat and listened to the beautiful creations of his 
fresh and glowing fancy. We can imagine the happy 
group gathered around the evening lamp ! " Well, my 
son," says the fond mother, looking up from her knitting- 
work, " what have you got for us to-night ? It is some 
time since you read us a story, and your sisters are as 
impatient as I am to have a new one." And then we 
can hear, or think we hear, the young man begin in a low 
and modest tone the story of " Edward Fane's Eosebud/* 



70 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

or "The Seven Vagabonds," or perchance (0 tearful, 
happy evening !) that tender idyl of " The Gentle Boy ! " 
What a privilege to hear for the first time a " Twice-Told 
Tale," before it was even once told to the public ! And I 
know with what rapture the delighted little audience 
must have hailed the advent of every fresh indication 
that genius, so seldom a visitant at any fireside, had come 
down so noiselessly to bless their quiet hearthstone in the 
sombre old town. In striking contrast to Hawthorne's 
audience nightly convened to listen while he read his 
charming tales and essays, I think of poor Bernardin de 
Saint-Pierre, facing those hard-eyed critics at the house of 
Madame Neckar, when as a young man and entirely 
unknown he essayed to read his then unpublished story of 
" Paul and Virginia." The story was simple and the 
voice of the poor and nameless reader trembled. Every- 
body was unsympathetic and gaped, and at the end of a 
quarter of an hour Monsieur de Buffon, who always had 
a loud way with him, cried out to Madame Neckar's 
servant, " Let the horses be put to my carriage ! " 

Hawthorne seems never to have known that raw 
period in authorship which is common to most growing 
writers, when the style is " overlanguaged," and when it 
plunges wildly through the " sandy deserts of rhetoric," 
or struggles as if it were having a personal difficulty with 
Ignorance and his brother Platitude. It was capitally 
said of Chateaubriand that " he lived on the summits of 
syllables," and of another young author that he was so 
dully good, that he made even virtue disreputable." 
Hawthorne had no such literary vices to contend with. 
His looks seemed from the start to be 

" Commercing with the skies," 

and he marching upward to the goal without impediment 
I was struck a few days ago with the untruth, so far aa 



HAWTHORNE. 71 

Hawtliorne is concerned, of a passage in the Preface to 
Endymion. Keats says : " The imagination of a boy is 
healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy ; 
but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is 
in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life 
uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted." Hawthorne's im- 
agination had no middle period of decadence or doubt, 
but continued, as it began, in full vigor to the end. 



In 1852 I went to Europe, and while absent had fre- 
quent most welcome letters from the delightful di-eamer. 
He had finished the "Blithedale Eomance" during my 
wanderings, and I was fortunate enough to arrange for its 
publication in London simultaneously with its appearance 
in Boston. One of his letters (dated from his new resi- 
dence in Concord, June 17, 1852) runs thus : — 

" You have succeeded admirably in regard to the ' Bhthedale Ro- 
mance,' and have got £ 150 more than I expected to receive. It 
will come in good time, too ; for my drafts have been pretty heavy 
of late, in consequence of buying an estate I ! I and fitting up my 
house. What a truant you are from the Corner ! I vrish, before leav- 
ing London, you would obtain for me copies of any English editions of 
my writings not already in my possession. I have Routledge's edi- 
tion of ' The Scarlet Letter,' the ' Mosses,' and ' Twice-Told Tales ' ; 
Bohn's editions of ' The House of the Seven Gables,' the ' Snow- 
Image ' and the ' Wonder-Book,' and Bogue's edition of ' The Scar- 
let Letter ' ; — these are all, and I should be glad of the rest. I 
meant to have written another ' Wonder-Book ' this summer, but 
another task has unexpectedly intervened. General Pierce of New 
Hampshire, the Democratic nominee for the Presidency, was a col- 
lege friend of mine, as you know, and we have been intimate 
through life. He wishes me to write his biography, and I have con- 
sented to do so ; somewhat reluctantly, however, for Pierce has now 
reached that altitude when a man, careful of his personal dignity, 
will begin to think of cutting his acquaintance. But I seek nothing 
from him, and therefore need not be ashamed to tell the truth of an 
old friend I have written to Barry Cornwall, and shall prob- 



72 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

ably enclose the letter along with this. I don't more than half be- 
lieve what you tell me of my reputation in England, and am only so 
far credulous on the strenerth of the £ 200, and shall have a somewhat 
stronger sense of this latter reality when I finger the cash. Do come 
home in season to preside over the publication of the Romance." 

He had christened his estate The Wayside, and in a 
postscript to the above letter he begs me to consider the 
name and tell him how I like it. 

Another letter, evidently foreshadowing a foreign ap- 
pointment from the newly elected President, contains this 
passage : — 

" Do make some inquiries about Portugal ; as, for instance, in 
what part of the world it lies, and whether it is an empire, a king- 
dom, or a republic. Also, and more particularly, the expenses of 
Uving there, and whether the Minister would be likely to be much 
pestered with his own countrymen. Also, any other information 
about foreign countries would be acceptable to an inquiring mind." 

When I returned from abroad I found him getting 
matters in readiness to leave the country for a consul- 
ship in Liverpool He seemed happy at the thought of 
flitting, but I wondered if he could possibly be as con- 
tented across the water as he was in Concord. I re- 
member walking with him to the Old Manse, a mile or 
so distant from The Wayside, his new residence, and 
talking over England and his proposed absence of several 
years. We stroUed round the house, where he spent the 
first years of his married life, and he pointed from the 
outside to the windows, out of which he had looked and 
seen supernatural and other visions. We walked up and 
down the avenue, the memory of which he has embalmed 
in the " Mosses," and he discoursed most pleasantly of all 
that had befallen him since he led a lonely, secluded life 
in Salem. It was a sleepy, warm afternoon, and he 
proposed that we should wander up the banks of the 
river and lie down and watch the clouds float above and 
in the quiet stream I recall his lounging, easy air as he 



HA WTHORNE. 73 

tolled me along until we came to a spot secluded, and 
ofttimes sacred to his wayward thoughts. He bade me 
lie down on the grass and hear the birds sing. As we 
steeped ourselves in the delicious idleness, he began to 
murmur some haK-forgotten lines from Thomson's " Sea- 
sons," which he said had been favorites of his from 
boyhood. While we lay there, hidden in the grass, we 
heard approaching footsteps, and Hawthorne hurriedly 
whispered, " Duck ! or we shall be interrupted by some- 
body." The solemnity of his manner, and the thought of 
the down-flat position in which we had both placed our- 
selves to avoid being seen, threw me into a foolish, semi- 
hysterical fit of laughter, and when he nudged me, and 
again whispered more lugubriously than ever, "Heaven 

help me, Mr. is close upon us ! " I felt convinced 

that if the thing went further, suffocation, in my case at 
least, must ensue. 

He kept me constantly informed, after he went to 
Liverpool, of how he was passing his time; and his 
charming " English Note-Books " reveal the fact that he 
was never idle. There were touches, however, in his 
private letters which escaped daily record in his journal, 
and I remember how delightful it was, after he landed in 
Europe, to get his frequent missives. In one of the first 
he gives me an account of a dinner where he was obliged 
to make a speech. He says : — 

" I tickled up John Bull's self-conceit (which is very easily done) 
with a few sentences of most outrageous flattery, and sat down 
in a general puddle of good feeling." In another he says : " I have 
taken a house in Rock Park, on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, and 
am as snug aa a bug in a rug. Next year you must come and see how 
I live. Give my regards to everybody, and my love to half a dozen. 
.... I wish you would call on Mr. Savage, the antiquarian, if you 
know him, and ask whether he can inform me what part of Eng- 
land the original William Hawthorne came from. He came over, I 

think, in 1634 It would really be a great obUgation if he could 

4 



74 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

answer the above query. Or, if the fact is not within his owq 
knowledge, he might perhaps indicate some place where such infor- 
mation might be obtained here in England. I presume there are 
records still extant somewhere of all the passengers by those early 
ships, with their English localities annexed to their names. Of all 
things, I should like to find a gravestone in one of these old 
churchyards with my own name upon it, although, for myself, I 
should wish to be buried in America, The graves are too horribly 
damp here." 

The hedgerows of England, the grassy meadows, and 
the picturesque old cottages delighted him, and he was 
never tired of writing to me about them. While wan- 
dering over the country, he was often deeply touched by 
meeting among the wild-flowers many of his old New 
England favorites, — bluebells, crocuses, primroses, fox- 
glove, and other flowers which are cultivated in out 
gardens, and which had long been familiar to him in 
America. 

I can imagine him, in his quiet, musing way, strolling 
through the daisied fields on a Sunday morning and 
hearing the distant church-bells chiming to service. His 
religion was deep and broad, but it was irksome for him 
to be fastened in by a pew-door, and I doubt if he often 
heard an English sermon. He very rarely described 
himself as inside a church, but he liked to wander among 
the graves in the churchyards and read the epitaphs on 
the moss-grown slabs. He liked better to meet and have 
a talk with the sexton than with the rector. 

He was constantly demanding longer letters from home ; 
and nothing gave him more pleasure than monthly news 
from " The Saturday Club," and detailed accounts of what 
was going forward in literature. One of his letters dated 
in January, 1854, starts off thus : — 

" I wish your epistolary propensities were stronger than they are. 
All your letters to me since I left America might be squeezed into 
one I send Ticknor a big cheese, which I long ago promised 



HAWTHORNE. 75 

liim, and my advice is, that he keep it in the shop, and daily, be- 
tween eleven and one o'clock, distribute slices of it to your half- 
starved authors, together with crackers and something to drink 

I thank you for the books you send me, and more especially for Mrs. 
Mowatt's Autobiography, which seems to me an admirable book. 
Of all things I delight in autobiographies ; and I hardly ever read one 
that interested me so much. She must be a remarkable woman, and 
I cannot but lament my ill fortune in never having seen her on the 

stage or elsewhere I count strongly upon your promise to be 

with us in May. Can't you bring Whipple with you ? " 

One of his favorite resorts in Liverpool was the board- 
ing-house of good Mrs. Blodgett, in Duke Street, a house 
where many Americans have found delectable quarters, 
after being tossed on the stormy Atlantic. " I have never 
known a better woman," Hawthorne used to say, " and 
her motherly kindness to me and mine I can never 
forget." Hundreds of American travellers will bear 
witness to the excellence of that beautiful old lady, 
who presided with such dignity and sweetness over her 
hospitable mansion. 

On the 13th of April, 1854, Hawthorne wrote to me 
this characteristic letter from the consular ofiice in Liver- 
pool : — 

" I am very glad that the ' Mosses ' have come into the hands of our 
firm ; and I return the copy sent me, after a careful revision. When 
I wrote those dreamy sketches, I little thought that I should ever 
preface an edition for the press amidst the bustling life of a Liver- 
pool consulate. Upon my honor, I am not quite sure that I entirely 
comprehend my own meaning, in some of these blasted allegories ; 
but I remember that I always had a meaning, or at least thought I had. 
I am a good deal changed since those times ; and, to tell you the 
truth, my past self is not very much to my taste, as I see myself in 
this book. Yet certainly there is more in it than the pubUc gen- 
erally gave me credit for at the time it was written. 

" But I don't think myself wortny of very much more credit 
than I got. It has been a very disagreeable task to read the book. 
The story of ' Rappacini's Daughter ' was published in the Demo- 
cratic Review, about the year 1844; and it was prefaced by some 



76 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

remarks on the celebrated French author (a certain M. de I'Aube- 
pine), from whose works it was translated. I left out this preface 
when the story was republished ; but I wish you would turn to it 
in the Democratic, and see whether it is worth while to insert it in 
the new edition. I leave it altogether to your judgment. 

" A young poet named has called on me, and has sent me some 

copies of his works to be transmitted to America. It seems to me 
there is good in him ; and he is recognized by Tennyson, by Car- 
lyle, by Kingsley, and others of the best people here. He writes me 
that this edition of his poems is nearly exhausted, and that Rout- 
ledge is going to publish another, enlarged and in better style. 

"Perhaps it might be well for you to take him up in America, 
At all events, try to bring him into notice ; and some day or other 
you may be glad to have helped a famous poet in his obscurity. 
The poor fellow has left a good post in the customs to cultivate 
literature in London ! 

" We shall begin to look for you now by every steamer from 
Boston. You must make up your mind to spend a good while with 
us before going to see your London friends. 

" Did you read the article on your friend De Quincey in the last 

"Westminster ? It was written by Mr. of this city, who was in 

America a year or two ago. The article is pretty well, but does 
nothing like adequate justice to De Quincey ; and in fact no Eng- 
lishman cares a pin for him. We are ten times as good readers and 
critics as they. 

" Is not Whipple coming here soon ? " 

Hawthorne's first visit to London afforded him great 
pleasure, but he kept out of the way of literary people as 
much as possible. He introduced himself to nobody, 

except Mr. , whose assistance he needed, in order 

to be identified at the bank. He wrote to me from 24 
George Street, Hanover Square, and told me he delighted 
in London, and wished he could spend a year there. He 
enjoyed floating about, in a sort of unknown way, among 
the rotund and rubicund figures made jolly with ale and 
port-wine. He was greatly amused at being told (his 
informants meaning to be complimentary) " that he would 
never be taken for anything but an Englishman." He 
called Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," just 




^-O-Mui^ GT- oCiui 



HA WTHORNE. 77 

printed at that time, " a broken-kneed gallop of a poem." 
He writes : — 

" John Bull is in high spirits just now at the taking of Sebas- 
topol. What an absurd personage John is I I find that my liking 
for him grows stronger the more I see of him, but that my admira- 
tion and respect have constantly decreased." 

One of his most intimate friends (a man unlike that 
individual of whom it was said that he was the friend of 
everybody that did not need a friend) was Francis Ben- 
noch, a merchant of Wood Street, Cheapside, London, the 
gentleman to whom Mrs. Hawthorne dedicated the Eng- 
lish Note-Books. Hawthorne's letters abounded in warm 
expressions of affection for the man whose noble hospi- 
tality and deep interest made his residence in England 
full of happiness. Bennoch was indeed like a brother to 
him, sympathizing warmly in all his literary projects, and 
giving him the benefit of his excellent judgment while he 
was sojourning among strangers. Bennoch's record may 
be found in Tom Taylor's admirable life of poor Haydon, 
the artist. All literary and artistic people who have had 
the good fortune to enjoy his friendship have loved him. 
I happen to know of his bountiful kindness to Miss 
Mitford and Hawthorne and poor old Jerdan, for these 
hospitalities happened in my time; but he began to 
befriend all who needed friendship long before I knew 
him. His name ought never to be omitted from the 
literary annals of England ; nor that of his wife either, 
for she has always made her delightful fireside warm and 
comforting to her husband's friends. 

Many and many a happy time Bennoch, Hawthorne, 
and myself have had together on British soil. I re- 
member we went once to dine at a great house in the 
country, years ago, where it was understood there would 
be no dinner speeches. The banquet was in honor of 
some society, — I have quite forgotten what, — but it 



■78 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

"was a jocose and not a serious club. The gentleman who 

gave it, Sir , was a most kind and genial person, and 

gathered about him on this occasion some of the brightest 
and best from London. All the way down in the train 
Hawthorne was rejoicing that this was to be a dinner 
without speech-making; "for," said he, "nothing would 
tempt me to go if toasts and such confounded deviltry 
were to be the order of the day." So we rattled along, 
without a fear of any impending cloud of oratory. The 
entertainment was a most exquisite one, about twenty 
gentlemen sitting down at the beautifully ornamented 
table. Hawthorne was in uncommonly good spirits, and, 
having the seat of honor at the right of his host, was 
pretty keenly scrutinized by his British brethren of the 
quill. He had, of course, banished all thought of speech- 
making, and his knees never smote together once, as he 
told me afterwards. But it became evident to my mind 
tha't Hawthorne's health was to be proposed with all the 
honors. I glanced at him across the table, and saw that 
he was unsuspicious of any movement against his quiet 
serenity. Suddenly and without warning our host rapped 
the mahogany, and began a set speech of welcome to the 
" distinguished American romancer." It was a very honest 
and a very hearty speech, but I dared not look at Haw- 
thorne. I expected every moment to see him glide out of 
the room, or sink down out of sight from his chair. The 
tortures I suffered on Hawthorne's account, on that occa- 
sion, I will not attempt to describe now. I knew nothing 
would have induced the shy man of letters to go down to 
Brighton, if he had known he was to be spoken at in that 
manner. I imagined his face a deep crimson, and his 
hands trembling with nervous horror; but judge of my 
surprise, when he rose to reply with so calm a voice and 
so composed a manner, that, in all my experience of din- 
ner-speaking, I never witnessed such a case of apparent 



HA WTHORNE. 79 

ease. (Easy-Chair C lumself, one of the best makers 

of after-dmner or any other speeches of our day, accord- 
ing to Charles Dickens, — no inadequate judge, all will 
allow, — never surpassed in eloquent effect this speech 
by Hawthorne.) There was no hesitation, no sign of 
lack of preparation, but he went on for about ten minutes 
in such a masterly manner, that I declare it was one 
of the most successful efforts of the kind ever made. 
Everybody was delighted, and, when he sat down, a wild 
and unanimous shout of applause rattled the glasses on 
the table. The meaning of his singular composure on 
that occasion I could never get him satisfactorily to 
explain, and the only remark I ever heard him make, in 
any way connected with this marvellous exhibition of 
coolness, was simply, "What a confounded fool I was to 
go down to that speech-making dinner ! " 

During all those long years, while Hawthorne was 
absent in Europe, he was anything but an idle man. y )n 
the contrary, he was an eminently busy one, in the best 
sense of that term ; and if his life had been prolonged, 
the public would have been a rich gainer for his resi- 
dence abroad. His brain teemed with romances, and 
once I remember he told me he had no less than five 
stories, well thought out, any one of which he could 
finish and publish whenever he chose to. There was one 
subject for a work of imagination that seems to have 
haunted him for years, and he has mentioned it twice in 
his journal. This was the subsequent life of the young 
man whom Jesus, looking on, " loved," and whom he bade 
to.sell all that he had and give to the poor, and take up 
his cross and follow him. " Something very deep and 
beautiful might be made out of this," Hawthorne said, 
"for the young man went away sorrowful, and is not 
recorded to have done what he was bidden to do." 

One of the most difficult matters he had to manage 



8o YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

while in England was the publication of Miss Bacon's 
singular book on Shakespeare. The poor lady, after he 
had agreed to see the work through the press, broke off all 
correspondence with him in a storm of wrath, accusing him 
of pusillanimity in not avowing full faith in her theory ; 
so that, as he told me, so far as her good-will was con- 
cerned, he had not gained much by taking the responsi- 
bility of her book upon his shoulders. It was a heavy 
weight for him to bear in more senses than one, for he 
paid out of his own pocket the expenses of publication. 

I find in his letters constant references to the kind- 
ness with which he was treated in London. He spoke 
of Mrs. S. C. Hall as "one of the best and warmest- 
hearted women in the world." Leigh Hunt, in his way, 
pleased and satisfied him more than almost any man he 
had seen in England. "As for other literary men," he 
says in one of his letters, " I doubt whether London can 
muster so good a dinner-party as that which assembles 
every month at the marble palace in School Street." 

All sorts of adventures befell him during his stay in 
Europe, even to that of having his house robbed, and his 
causing the thieves to be tried and sentenced to trans- 
portation. In the summer-time he travelled about the 
country in England and pitched his tent wherever fancy 
prompted. One autumn afternoon in September he writes 
to me from Leamington : — 

" I received your letter only this morning, at this cleanest and 
prettiest of English towns, where we are going to spend a week or 
two before taking our departure for Paris. We are acquainted 
with Leamington already, having resided here two summers ago ; 
and the country round about is unadulterated England, rich in old 
castles, manor-houses, churches, and thatched cottages, and as green 
as Paradise itself. I only wish I had a house here, and that you 
could come and be my guest in it ; but I am a poor wayside vaga- 
bond, and only find shelter for a night or so, and then trudge on- 
ward again. My wife and children and myself are familiar with all 



HAWTHORNE. 8i 

kinds of lodgement and modes of living, but we have forgotten what 
home is, — at least the children have, poor things I I doubt whether 
they will ever feel incUned to live long in one place. The worst of 
it is, I have outgrown my house in Concord, and feel no inclination 
to return to it. 

" We spent seven weeks in Manchester, and went most diligently 
to the Art Exhibition ; and I really begin to be sensible of the 
rudiments of a taste in pictures." 

It was during one of his rambles with Alexander Ire- 
land through the Manchester Exhibition rooms that Haw- 
thorne saw Tennyson wandering about. I have always 
. thought it unfortunate that these two men of genius 
could not have been introduced on that occasion. Haw- 
thorne was too shy to seek an introduction, and Tennyson 
was not aware that the American author was present. 
Hawthorne records in his journal that he gazed at Tennyson 
with all his eyes, "and rejoiced more in him than in aU 
the other wonders of the Exhibition." When I afterwards 
told Tennyson that the author whose " Twice-Told Tales " 
he happened to be then reading at Earringford had met 
him at Manchester, but did not make himself known, the 
Laureate said in his frank and hearty manner: "Why 
did n't he come up and let me shake hands with him ? I 
am sure I should have been glad to meet a man like 
Hawthorne anywhere." 

At the close of 1857 Hawthorne writes to me that he 
hears nothing of the appointment of his successor in the 
consulate, since he had sent in his resignation. " Some- 
body may turn up any day," he says, " with a new com- 
mission in his pocket." He was meanwhile getting ready 
for Italy, and he writes, " I expect shortly to be released 
from durance." 

In liis last letter before leaving England for the Conti' 
nent he says : — 

" I made up a huge package the other day, consisting of seven 
closely written volumes of journal, kept by m3 since my arrival in 
4* F 



82 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

England, and filled with sketches of places and men and manners, 
many of which would doubtless be very delightful to the public. I 
think I shall seal them up, with directions in my will to have them 
opened and published a century hence ; and your firm shall have 
the refusal of them then. 

" Remember me to everybody, for I love all my friends at least as 
well as ever." 

Released from the cares of office, and having nothing 
to distract his attention, his life on the Continent opened 
full of delightful excitement. His pecuniary situation 
was such as to enable him to live very comfortably in a 
country where, at that time, prices were moderate. 

In a letter dated from a villa near Florence on the 3d 
of September, 1858, he thus describes in a charming 
manner his way of life in Italy : — 

" I am afraid I have stayed away too long, and am forgotten by 
everybody. You have piled up the dusty remnants of my editions, 
I suppose, in that chamber over the shop, where you once took me 
to smoke a cigar, and have crossed my name out of your list of 
authors, without so much as asking whether I am dead or alive. 
But I like it well enough, nevertheless. It is pleasant to feel at 
last that I am really away from America, — a satisfaction that I 
never enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to 
me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom 
was continually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on 
the way outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my 
own countrymen there. At Rome, too, it was not much better. 
But here in Florence, and in the summer-time, and in this secluded 
villa, I have escaped out of all my old tracks, and am really remote. 

" I like my present residence immensely. The house stands on a 
hill, overlooking Florence, and is big enough to quarter a regiment ; 
insomuch that each member of the family, including servants, has a 
separate suite of apartments, and there are vast wildernesses of up- 
per rooms into which we have never yet sent exploring expeditions. 

" At one end of the house there is a moss-grown tower, haunted 
by owls and by the ghost of a monk, who was confined there in the 
thirteenth century, previous to being burned at the stake in the 
principal square of Florence. I hire this villa, tower and all, at 
twenty-eight dollars a month ; but I mean to take it away bodily 



HA WTHORNE. 83 

and clap it into a romance, which I have in my head ready to be 
written out. 

" Speaking of romances, I have planned two, one or both of which 
I could have ready for the press in a few months if I were either in 
England or America. But I find this Italian atmosphere not favora- 
ble to the close toil of composition, although it is a very good air to 
dream in. I must breathe the fogs of old England or the east-winds 
of Massachusetts, in order to put me into working trim. Neverthe- 
less, I shall endeavor to be busy during the coming winter at Rome, 
but there will be so much to distract my thoughts that I have little 
hope of seriously accomplishing anything. It is a pity ; for I have 
really a plethora of ideas, and should feel relieved by discharging 
some of them upon the public. 

" We shaU continue here till the end of this month, and shall 
then return to Eome, where I have already taken a house for six 
months. In the middle of AprU we intend to start for home by the 
way of Geneva and Paris ; and, after spending a few weeks in Eng- 
land, shall embark for Boston in July or the beginning of August. 
After so long an absence (more than five years already, which will 
be six before you see me at the old Corner), it is not altogether 
delightful to think of returning. Everybody will be changed, and 
I myself, no doubt, as much as anybody. Ticknor and you, I sup- 
pose, were both upset in the late religious earthquake, and when 
I inquire for you the clerks will direct me to the ' Business Men's 
Conference.' It won't do. I shall be forced to come back again and 
take refiige in a London lodging. London is like the grave in one 
respect, — any man can make himself at home there; and whenever 
a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had better either die or 
go to London. 

" Speaking of the grave reminds me of old age and other disa- 
greeable matters ; and I would remark that one grows old in Italy 
twice or three times as fast as in other countries. I have three 
gray hairs now for one that I brought fi-om England, and I shall 
look venerable indeed by next summer, when I return. 

" Remember me affectionately to all my friends. Whoever has a 
kindness for me may be assured that I have twice as much for him." 

Hawthorne's second \dsit to Eome, in the winter of 
1859, was not a fortunate one. His own health was 
excellent during his sojourn there, but several members 
of his family fell ill, and he became very nervous and 
longed to get away. In one of his letters he says : — 



84 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

" I bitterly detest Rome, and shall rejoice to bid it farewell for- 
ever; and I fully acquiesce in all the mischief and ruin that has 
happened to it, from Nero's conflagration downward. In fact, I wish 
the very site had been obliterated before I ever saw it." 

He found solace, however, during the series of domestic 
troubles (continued illness in his family) that befell, in 
writing memoranda for "The Marble Faun." He thug 
announces to me the beginning of the new romance : — 

" I take some credit to myself for having sternly shut myself up 
for an hour or two almost every day, and come to close grips with a 
romance which I have been trying to tear out of my mind. As for 
my success, I can't say much ; indeed, I don't know what to say at 
all. I only know that I have produced what seems to be a larger 
amount of scribble than either of my former romances, and that 
portions of it interested me a good deal whUe I was writing them ; 
but I have had so many interruptions, from things to see and things 
to suffer, that the story has developed itself in a very imperfect way, 
and will have to be revised hereafter. I could finish it for the press 
in the time that I am to remain here (till the 15th of April), but my 
brain is tired of it just now ; and, besides, there are many objects that 
I shall regret not seeing hereafter, though I care very little about 
seeing them now ; so I shaU throw aside the romance, and take it 
up again next August at The Wayside." 

He decided to be back in England early in the summer, 
and to sail for home in July. He writes to me from 
Rome : — 

" I shall go home, I fear, with a heavy heart, not expecting to be 

very weU contented there If I were but a hundred times 

richer than I am, how very comfortable I could be ! I consider it a 
great piece of good fortune that I have had experience of the discom- 
forts and miseries of Italy, and did not go directly home from Eng- 
land. Anything will seem like Paradise after a Roman winter. 

" If I had but a house fit to live in, I should be greatly more rec- 
onciled to coming home ; but I am really at a loss to imagine how 
we are to squeeze ourselves into that little old cottage of mine. 
We had outgrown it before we came away, and most of us are 
twice as big now as we were then. 

" I have an attachment to the place, and should be sorry to give 
it up ; but I shall half ruin myself if I try to enlarge the house, and 



HA WTHORNE. 85 

quite if I build another. So what is to be done ? Pray have some 
plan for me before I get back ; not that I think you can possibly hit 

on anything that will suit me I shall return by way of Venice 

and Geneva, spend two or three weeks or more in Paris, and sail for 
home, as I said, in July. It would be an exceeding delight to me to 
meet you or Ticknor in England, or anywhere else. At any rate, it 
will cheer my heart to see you all and the old Corner itself, when I 
touch my dear native soil again." 

I went abroad again in 1859, and found Hawthorne 
back in England, working away diligently at " The Mar- 
ble Faun." While travelling on the Continent, during 
the autumn I had constant letters from him, giving 
accounts of his progress on the new romance. He says : 
" I get along more slowly than I expected If I mis- 
take not, it will have some good chapters." Writing on 
the 10th of October he tells me : — 

" The romance is almost finished, a great heap of manuscript being 
already accumulated, and only a few concluding chapters remaining 
behind. If hard pushed, I could have it ready for the press in a 
fortnight ; but unless the publishers [Smith and Elder were to bring 
out the work in England] are in a hurry, I shall be somewhat longer 
about it. I have found far more work to do upon it than I anticipat- 
ed. To confess the truth, I admire it exceedingly at intervals, but 
am liable to cold fits, during which I think it the most infernal non- 
sense. You ask for the title. I have not yet fixed upon one, but 
here are some that have occurred to me ; neither of them exactly meets 
my idea : ' Monte Beni ; or. The Faun. A Romance.' ' The Romance 
of a Faun.' ' The Faun of Monte Beni.' * Monte Beni : a Romance." 
' Miriam : a Romance.' ' Hilda : a Romance.' ' Donatello : a Romance.' 
' The Faun : a Romance.' ' Marble and Man : a Romance.' When you 
have read the work (which I especially wish you to do before it goes 
to press), you will be able to select one of them, or imagine something 
better. There is an objection in my mind to an Italian name, though 
perhaps Monte Beni might do. Neither do I wish, if I can help it, 
to make the fantastic aspect of the book too prominent by putting 
the Faun into the title-page." 

Hawthorne wrote so intensely on his new story, that he 
was quite worn down before he finished it. To recruit 
his strength he went to Kedcar. where the bracing air of 



86 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

the German Ocean soon counteracted the ill effect of 
overwork. "The Marble Faun" was in the London 
printing-office in November, and he seemed very glad to 
have it off his hands. His letters to me at this time (I 
was stin on the Continent) were jubilant with hope. Ho 
was living in Leamington, and was constantly writing to 
me that I should find the next two months more com- 
fortable in England than anywhere else. On the 17th he 
writes : — 

" The Italian spring commences in February, wHch is certainly au 
advantage, especially as from February to May is the most dis- 
agreeable portion of the English year. But it is always summer by 
a bright coal-fire. We find nothing to complain of in the climate of 
Leamington. To be sure, we cannot always see our hands before us 
for fog ; but I like fog, and do not care about seeing my hand before 
me. We have thought of staying here till after Christmas and then 
going somewhere else, — perhaps to Bath, perhaps to Devonshire. 
But all this is uncertain. Leamington is not so desirable a residence 
in winter as in summer ; its great charm consisting in the many de- 
lightful walks and drives, and in its neighborhood to interesting places. 
I have quite finished the book (some time ago) and have sent it to 
Smith and Elder, who tell me it is in the printer's hands, but I have 
received no proof-sheets. They^ivrote to request another title in- 
stead of the ' Romance of Monte Beni,' and I sent them their choice 
of a dozen. I don't know what they have chosen ; neither do I 
understand their objection to the above. Perhaps they don't like 
the book at all ; but I shall not trouble myself about that, as long 
as they publish it and pay me my £ 600. For my part, I think it 
much my best romance ; but I can see some points where it is open 
to assault. If it could have appeared first in America, it would have 
been a safe thing. . . . 

" I mean to spend the rest of my abode in England in blessed 
idleness : and as for my journal, in the first place I have not got it 
here ; secondly, there is nothing in it that will do to publish." 



Hawthorne was, indeed, a consummate artist, and I do 
not remember a single slovenly passage in all his ac- 
knowledged writings. It was a privilege, and one that 



HA WTHORNE. 87 

I can never sufficiently estimate, to have known him 
personally through so many years. He was unlike any 
other author I have met, and there were qualities in 
his nature so sweet and commendable, that, through aU 
his shy reserve, they sometimes asserted themselves in a 
marked and conspicuous manner. I have known rude 
people, who were jostling him in a crowd, give way at 
the sound of his low and almost irresolute voice, so potent 
was the gentle spell of command that seemed born of his 
genius. 

Although he was apt to keep aloof from his kind, and 
did not hesitate frequently to announce by his manner 
that 

" Solitude to him 
Was blitlie society, who filled the air 
With gladness and involuntary songs," 

I ever found him, like Milton's Eaphael, an "affable'* 
angel, and inclined to converse on whatever was human 
and good in life. 

Here are some more extracts from the letters he wrote 
to me while he was engaged on " The Marble Faun." 
On the 11th of February, 1860, he writes from Leam- 
ington in England (I was then in Italy) : — 

" I received your letter from Florence, and conclude that you are 
now in Eome, and probably enjoying the Carnival, — a tame de- 
scription of which, by the by, I have introduced into my Romance 

" I thank you most heartily for your kind wishes in favor of the 
forthcoming work, and sincerely join my own prayers to yours in. 
its behalf, but without much confidence of a good result. My own. 
opinion is, that I am not really a popular writer, and that what popu- 
larity I have gained is chiefly accidental, and owing to other causes 
than my own kind or degree of merit. Possibly I may (or may 
not) deserve something better than popularity; but looking at all 
my productions, and especially this latter one, with a cold or critical 
eye, I can see that they do not make their appeal to the popular 
mind. It is odd enough, moreover, that my own individual taste is 
for quite another class of works than those which I myself am able 



88 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

to write. If I were to meet with such books as mine, by another 
writer, I don't believe I should be able to get through them. 

" To return to my own moonshiny Romance ; its fate will soon 
be settled, for Smith and Elder mean to publish on the 28th of this 
month. Poor Ticknor will have a tight scratch to get his edition 
out contemporaneously; they having sent him the third volume 
only a week ago. I think, however, there will be no danger of 
piracy in America. Perhaps nobody will think it worth stealing. 
Give my best regards to William Story, and look well at his Cleo- 
patra, for you will meet her again in one of the chapters which I wrote 
with most pleasure. If he does not find himself famous henceforth, 
the fault wUl be none of mine. I, at least, have done my duty by 
him, whatever delinquency there may be on the part of other critics. 

" Smith and Elder persist in calling the book ' Transformation,' 
which gives one the idea of Harlequin in a pantomime ; but I have 
strictly enjoined upon Ticknor to call it ' The Marble Faun j a Ro- 
mance of Monte Beni.' " 

In one of his letters written at this period, referring to 
his design of going home, he says : — 

" I shall not have been absent seven years till the 5th of July 

next, and I scorn to touch Yankee soil sooner than that As 

regards going home I alternate between a longing and a dread." 

Returning to London from the Continent, in April, I 
found this letter, written from Bath, awaiting my ar- 
rival : — 

" You are welcome back. I really began to fear that you had been 
assassinated among the Apennines or killed in that outbreak at 
Rome. I have taken passages for all of us in the steamer which 
sails the 16th of June. Your berths are Nos. 19 and 20. I en- 
gaged them with the understanding that you might go earlier or later, 
if you chose; but I would advise you to go on the 16th ; in the 
first place, because tiie state-rooms for our party are the most eli- 
gible in the ship; secondly, because we shall otherwise mutually 
lose the pleasure of each other's company. Besides, I consider it 
my duty, towards Ticknor and towards Boston, and America at 
large, to take you into custody and bring you home ; for I know 
you will never come except upon compulsion. Let me know at 
once whether I am to use force. 



HAWTHORNE. _ 89 

" The book (The Marble Faun) has done better than I thought it 
would ; for you will have discovered, by this time, that it is an auda- 
cious attempt to impose a tissue of absurdities upon the public by the 
mere art of style of narrative. I hardly hoped that it would go 
down with John Bull ; but then it is always my best point of 
writing, to undertake such a task, and I really put what strength I 
have into many parts of this book. 

" The English critics generally (with two or three unimportant 
exceptions) have been sufficiently favorable, and the review in the 
Times awarded the highest praise of all. At home, too, the notices 
have been very kind, so far as they have come under my eye. Lowell 
had a good one in the Atlantic Monthly, and Hillard an excellent 
one in the Courier ; and yesterday I received a sheet of the May 
number of the Atlantic containing a really keen and profound 
article by Whipple, in which he goes over all my works, and recog- 
nizes that element of unpopularity which (as nobody knows better 
than myself) pervades them all. I agree with almost all he says, 
except that I am conscious of not deserving nearly so much 
praise. When I get home, I will try to write a more genial book ; 
but the Devil himself always seems to get into my inkstand, and I 
can only exorcise him by pensful at a time. 

" I am coming to London very soon, and mean to spend a fort- 
night of next month there. I have been quite homesick through 
this past dreary winter. Did you ever spend a winter in England ? 
If not, reserve your ultimate conclusion about the country until 
you have done so." 

We met in London early in May, and, as our lodgings 
•were not far apart, we were frequently together. I recall 
many pleasant dinners with him and mutual friends in 
various charming seaside and country-side places. "We 
used to take a run down to Greenwich or Blackwall once or 
twice a week, and a trip to Eichmond was always grateful 
to him. Bennoch was constantly planning a day's happi- 
ness for his friend, and the hours at that pleasant season 
of the year were not long enough for our delights. In 
London we strolled along the Strand, day after day, now 
diving into Bolt Court, in pursuit of Johnson's where- 
abouts, and now stumbling around the Temple, where 
Goldsmith at one time had his quarters. Hawthorne 



90 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

was never weary of standing on London Bridge, and 
watching the steamers plying up and down the Thames. 
I was much amused by his manner towards importu- 
nate and sometimes impudent beggars, scores of whom 
would attack us even in the shortest walk. He had a 
mild way of making a severe and cutting remark, which 
used to remind me of a little incident which Charlotte 
Cushman once related to me. She said a man in the 
gallery of a theatre (I think she was on the stage at the 
time) made such a disturbance that the play could not 
proceed. Cries of " Throw him over " arose from all parts 
of the house, and the noise became furious. All was 
tumultuous chaos until a sweet and gentle female voice 
was heard in the pit, exclaiming, " No ! I pray you don't 
throw him over ! I beg of you, dear friends, don't throw 
him over, but — kill him where he is." 

One of our most royal times was at a parting dinner 
at the house of Barry Cornwall. Among the notables 
present were Kinglake and Leigh Hunt. Our kind- 
hearted host and his admirable wife greatly delighted in 
Hawthorne, and they made this occasion a most grateful 
one to him. I remember when we went up to the draw- 
ing-room to join the ladies after dinner, the two dear old 
poets, Leigh Hunt and Barry Cornwall, mounted the 
stairs with their arms round each other in a very tender 
and loving way. Hawthorne often referred to this scene 
as one he would not have missed for a great deal. 

His renewed intercourse with Motley in England gave 
him peculiar pleasure, and his genius found an ardent 
admirer in the eminent historian. He did not go much 
into society at that time, but there were a few houses in 
London where he always seemed happy. 

I met him one night at a great evening-party, looking 
on from a nook a little removed from the full glare of the 
soiree. Soon, however, it was whispered about that the 



HAWTHORNE. 91 

famous American romance-writer was in tlie room, and 
an enthusiastic English lady, a genuine admirer and 
intelligent reader of his books, ran for her album and 
attacked him for " a few words and his name at the end" 
He looked dismally perplexed, and turning to me said 
imploringly in a whisper, " For pity's sake, what shall I 
write ? I can't think of a word to add to my name. 
Help me to something." Thinking him partly in fun, 
I said, "Write an original couplet, — this one, for in- 
stance, — 

* When tliis you see, 
Eemember me,'" 

and to my amazement he stepped forward at once to the 
table, wrote the foolish lines I had suggested, and, shut- 
ting the book, handed it very contentedly to the happy 
lady. 

We sailed from England together in the month of June, 
as we had previously arranged, and our voyage home was, 
to say the least, an unusual one. We had calm summer, 
moonlight weather, with no storms. Mrs. Stowe was on 
board, and in her own cheery and delightful way she 
enlivened the passage with some capital stories of her 
early life. 

When we arrived at Queenstown, the captain an- 
nounced to us that, as the ship would wait there six 
hours, we might go ashore and see something of our 
Irish friends. So we chartered several jaunting-cars, 
after much tribulation and delay in arranging terms with 
the drivers thereof, and started off on a merry exploring 
expedition. I remember there was a good deal of racing 
up and down the hills of Queenstown, much shouting 
and laughing, and crowds of beggars howling after us for 
pence and beer. The Irish jaunting-car is a peculiar 
institution, and we all sat with our legs dangling over 
the road in a " dim and perilous way." Occasionally a 



92 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

horse would give out, for the animals were sad specimens, 
poorly fed and wofully driven. We were almost devoured 
by the ragamuffins that ran beside our wheels, and I 
remember the "sad civility" with which Hawthorne re- 
garded their clamors. We had provided ourselves before 
starting with much small coin, which, however, gave out 
during our first mile. Hawthorne attempted to explain 
our inability further to supply their demands, having, as 
he said to them, nothing less than a sovereign in his 
pocket, when a voice from the crowd shouted, " Bedad, 
your honor, I can change that for ye " ; and the knave 
actually did it on the spot. 

Hawthorne's love for the sea amounted to a passionate 
worship ; and while I (the worst sailor probably on this 
planet) was longing, spite of the good company on board, 
to reach land as soon as possible, Hawthorne was con- 
stantly saying in his quiet, earnest way, " I should like to 
sail on and on forever, and never touch the shore again." 
He liked to stand alone in the bows of the ship and see 
the sun go down, and he was never tired of walking the 
deck at midnight. I used to watch his dark, solitary 
figure under the stars, pacing up and down some unfre- 
quented part of the vessel, musing and half melancholy. 
Sometimes he would lie down beside me and commiserate 
my unquiet condition. Seasickness, he declared, he could 
not understand, and was constantly recommending most 
extraordinary dishes and drinks, "all made out of the 
artisfs brain," which he said were sovereign remedies for 
nautical illness. I remember to this day some of the 
preparations which, in his revelry of fancy, he would 
advise me to take, a farrago of good things almost 
rivalling " Oberon's Feast," spread out so daintily in 
Herrick's " Hesperides." He thought, at first, if I could 
bear a few roc's eggs beaten up by a mermaid on 9 
dolphin's back, I might be benefited. He decided that a 



HA WTHORNE. 93 

gruel made from a sheaf of Robin Hood's arrows would 
be strengthening. When suffering pain, " a right gude 
willie-waught," or a stiff cup of hemlock of the Socrates 
brand, before retiring, he considered very good. He said 
he had heard recommended a dose of salts distilled from 
the tears of Niobe, but he did n't approve of that remedy. 
He observed that he had a high opinion of hearty food, 
such as potted owl with Minerva sauce, airy tongues of 
sirens, stewed ibis, livers of Roman Capitol geese, the 
wings of a Plicenix not too much done, love-lorn night- 
ingales cooked briskly over Aladdin's lamp, chicken-pies 
made of fowls raised by Mrs. Carey, Nautilus chowder, 
and the like. Fruit, by all means, should always be 
taken by an uneasy victim at sea, especially Atalanta 
pippins and purple gi-apes raised by Bacchus & Co. 
Examining my garments one day as I lay on deck, he 
thought I was not warmly enough clad, and he recom- 
mended, before I took another voyage, that I should fit 
myself out in Liverpool with a good warm sliirt from the 
shop of Nessus & Co. in Bold Street, where I could also 
find stout seven-league boots to keep out the damp. He 
knew another shop, he said, where I could buy raven- 
down stockings, and sable clouds with a silver lining, 
most warm and comfortable for a sea voyage. 

His own appetite was excellent, and day after day he 
used to come on deck after dinner and describe to me 
what he had eaten. Of course his accounts were always 
exaggerations, for my amusement. I remember one night 
he gave me a running catalogue of what food he had 
partaken during the day, and the sum total was convuls- 
ing from its absurdity. Among the viands he had 
consumed, I remember he stated there were "several 
yards of steak," and a " whole warrenful of Welsh rab- 
iDits." The " divine spirit of Humor " was upon him 
during many of those days at sea, and he revelled in it; 
like a careless child. 



94 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

That was a voyage, indeed, long to be remembered, and 
I shall ever look back upon it as the most satisfactory 
"sea turn" I ever happened to experience. I have 
sailed many a weary, watery mile since then, but Haw- 
thorne was not on board ! 

The summer after his arrival home he spent quietly in 
Concord, at the Wayside, and illness in his family made 
him at times unusually sad. In one of his notes to me 
he says : — 

" I am continually reminded nowadays of a response which I 
once heard a drunken sailor make to a pious gentleman, who 
asked him how he felt , ' Pretty d — d miserable, thank God ! ' It 
Tery well expresses my thorough discomfort and forced acquies- 
cence." 

Occasionally he wrote requesting me to make a change, 
here and there, in the new edition of his works then 
passing through the press. On the 23d of September, 
1860, he writes : — 

" Please to append the following note to the foot of the page, at 
the commencement of the story caUed ' Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, 
in the ' Twice-Told Tales ' : ' In an English Review, not long since, I 
have been accused of plagiarizing the idea of this story from a 
chapter in one of the novels of Alexandre Dumas. There has un- 
doubtedly been a plagiarism, on one side or the other ; but as my 
story was written a good deal more than twenty years ago, and as 
the novel is of considerably more recent date, I take pleasure in 
thinking that M. Dumas has done me the honor to appropriate one 
of the fanciful conceptions of my earher days. He is heartily wel- 
come to it ; nor is it the only instance, by many, in which the great 
French romancer has exercised the privilege of commanding genius 
by confiscating the intellectual property of less famous people to his 
own use and behoof.' " 

Hawthorne was a diligent reader of the Bible, and 
when sometimes, in my ignorant way, I would question, 
in a proof-sheet, his use of a word, he would almost 
always refer me to the Bible as his authority. It was a 
great pleasure to hear him talk about the Book of Job, 



HAWTHORNE. 95 

and Ms voice woiild. be tremulous with feeling, as he 
sometimes quoted a touching passage from the New 
Testament. In one of his letters he says to me : — 

" Did not I suggest to you, last summer, the publication of the 
Bible in ten or twelve 12mo volumes ? I think it would have great 
success, and, at least (but, as a publisher, I suppose this is the very- 
smallest of your cares), it would result in the salvation of a great 
many souls, who will never find their way to heaven, if left to learn 
it from the inconvenient editions of the Scriptures now in use. It is 
very singular that this form of publisliing the Bible in a single bulky 
or closely printed volume should be so long continued. It was first 
adopted, I suppose, as being the universal mode of publication at 
the time when the Bible was translated. Shakespeare, and the other 
old dramatists and poets, were first pubUshed in the same form ; 
but aU of them have long since been broken into dozens and scores 
of portable and readable volumes ; and why not the Bible ? " 

During this period, after his return from Europe, I saw 
him frequently at the Wayside, in Concord. He now 
seemed happy in the dwelling he had put in order for 
the calm and comfort of his middle and later life. He 
had added a tower to his house, in which he could be 
safe from intrusion, and where he could muse and write. 
Never was poet or romancer more fitly shrined. Drum' 
mond at Hawthornden, Scott at Abbotsford, Dickens at 
Gad's Hill, Irving at Sunnyside, were not more appro- 
priately sheltered. Shut up in his tower, he could escape 
from the tumult of life, and be alone with only the birds 
and the bees in concert outside his casement. The view 
from this apartment, on every side, was lovely, and Haw- 
thorne enjoyed the charming prospect as I have known 
few men to enjoy nature. 

His favorite walk lay near his house, — indeed it was 
part of his own grounds, — a little hillside, where he had 
worn a foot-path, and where he might be found in good 
weather, when not employed in the tower. While walk- 
ing to and fro on this bit of rising ground he meditated 



96 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and composed innumerable romances that were never 
written, as well as some that were. Here he first an- 
nounced to me his plan of "The Dolliver Komance," 
and, from what he told me of his design of the story as 
it existed in his mind, I thought it would have been the 
greatest of his books. An enchanting memory is left of 
that morning when he laid out the whole story before me 
as he intended to write it. The plot was a grand one, and 
I tried to tell him how much I was impressed by it. Very 
soon after our interview, he wrote to me : — 

" In compliance with your exhortations, I have begun to think 
seriously of that story, not, as yet, with a pen in my hand, but 

trudging to and fro on my hilltop I don't mean to let you see 

the first chapters till I have written the final sentence of the story. 
Indeed, the first chapters of a story ought always to be the last 

written If you want me to write a good book, send me a 

good pen ; not a gold one, for they seldom suit me ; but a pen flexible 
and capacious of ink, and that will not grow stiff" and rheumatic the 
moment I get attached to it. I never met with a good pen in my 
life." 

Time went on, the war broke out, and he had not the 
heart to go on with his new Eomance. During the month 
of April, 1862, he made a visit to Washington with his 
friend Ticknor, to whom he was greatly attached. WhUe 
on this visit to the capital he sat to Leutze for a portrait. 
He took a special fancy to the artist, and, while he was 
sitting to him, wrote a long letter to me. Here is an 
extract from it: — 

" I stay here only while Leutze finishes a portrait, which I think 
will be the best ever painted of the same unworthy subject. One 
charm it must needs have, — an aspect of immortal jollity and well- 
to-doness ; for Leutze, when the sitting begins, gives me a first- 
rate cigar, and when he sees me getting tired, he brings out a bottle 
of splendid champagne ; and we quaffed and smoked yesterday, in 
a blessed state of mutual good- will, for three hours and a half, during 
which the picture made a really miraculous progress. Leutze is the 
best of fellows." 



TR'KNOR, KlK.f.DS, AND HAWTHORNE 



n 






fr 


f 








M^^^^^^^^^^^K 


Ir^^^^^^^H^^^^^^^M^B^H^^^^^^^^^^^^^^HI 





HAWTHORNE. 97 

In the same letter he thus describes the sinking of the 
Cumberland, and I know of nothing finer in its way : — 

" I see in a newspaper that Holmes is going to write a song on the 
sinking of the Cumberland ; and feeling it to be a sub\^ct of national 
importance, it occurs to me that he might like to know her present 
condition. She lies with her three masts sticking up out of the 
water, and careened over, the water being nearly on a level with 
her maintop, — I mean that first landing-place from the deck of the 
vessel, after climbing the shrouds. The rigging does not appear at 
all damaged. There is a tattered bit of a pennant, about a foot and 
a half long, fluttering from the tip-top of one of the masts ; but 
the flag, the ensign of the ship (which never was struck, thank 
God), is under water, so as to be quite invisible, being attached to 
the gaff, I think they call it, of the mizzen-mast; and though this 
bald description makes nothing of it, I never saw anything so glo- 
riously forlorn as those three masts. I did not think it was in me 
to be so moved by any spectacle of the kind. Bodies still occasion- 
ally float up from it. The Secretary of the Navy says she shall lie 
there till she goes to pieces, but I suppose by and by they will sell 
her to some Yankee for the value of her old iron. 

"P. S. My hair really is not so white as this photograph, which I 
enclose, makes me. The sun seems to take an infernal pleasure iu 
making me venerable, — as if I were as old as himself." 

Hawthorne has rested so long in the twilight of im^- 
personality, that I hesitate sometimes to reveal the man 
even to his warmest admirers. This very day Sainte^ 
Beuve has made me feel a fresh reluctance in unveiling 
my friend, and there seems almost a reproof in tkese 
words, from the eloquent French author : — 

" We know nothing or nearly nothing of the Hfe of La Bruyere. 
and this obscurity adds, it has been remarked, to the effect of his 
work, and, it may be said, to the piquant happiness of his destiny. 
If there was not a single line of his unique book, which from the 
first instant of its publication did not appear and remain in the clear 
light, so, on the other hand, there was not one individual detail re- 
garding the author which was well known. Every ray of the cen- 
tury fell upon each page of the book and the face of the man who 
held it open in his hand was veiled from our sight." 



98 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Beautifully said, as usual with. Sainte-Beuve, but 
venture, notwithstanding such eloquent warning, to pro 
ceed. 

After his return home from Washington Hawthorne 
sent to me, during the month of May, an article for the 
Atlantic Monthly, which he entitled " Chiefly about "War- 
Matters." The paper, excellently well done throughout, 
of course, contained a personal description of President 
Lincoln, which I thought, considered as a portrait of a 
living man, and drawn by Hawthorne, it would not be 
wise or tasteful to print. The office of an editor is a 
disagreeable one sometimes, and the case of Hawthorne 
on Lincoln disturbed me not a little. After reading the 
manuscript, I wrote to the author, and asked his per- 
mission to omit his description of the President's per- 
sonal appearance. As usual, — for he was the kindest and 
sweetest of contributors, the most good-natured and the 
most amenable man to advise I ever knevr, — he consented 
to my proposal, and allowed me to print the article with 
the alterations. If any one will turn to the paper in the 
Atlantic Monthly (it is in the number for July, 1862), 
it will be observed there are several notes ; all of these 
were written by Hawthorne himseK. He complied with 
my request without a murmur, but he always thought I 
was wrong in my decision. He said the whole descrip- 
tion of the interview and the President's personal appear- 
ance were, to his mind, the only parts of the article worth 
publisliing. "What a terrible thing," he complained, 
" it is to try to let off a little bit of truth into this mis- 
erable humbug of a world ! " President Lincoln is dead, 
and as Hawthorne once wrote to me, " Upon my honor, it 
seems to me the passage omitted has an historical value," 
I will copy here verbatim what I advised my friend, 
both on his own account and the President's, not to print 
nine years ago. Hawthorne and his party had gone into 



HA WTHORNE. 99 

the President's room, annexed, as he says, as supernu- 
meraries to a deputation from a Massachusetts whip- 
factory, with a present of a splendid whip to the Chief 
Magistrate : — 

" By and by there was a little stir on the staircase and in the 
passage-way, and in lounged a tall, loose-jointed figure, of an ex- 
aggerated Yankee port and demeanor, whom (as being about the 
homeliest man I ever saw, yet by no means repulsive or disagreea- 
ble) it was impossible not to recognize as Uncle Abe. 

" Unquestionably, Western man though he be, and Kentuckian by 
birth. President Lincoln is the essential representative of all Yan- 
kees, and the veritable specimen, physically, of what the world 
seems determined to regard as our characteristic qualities. It is the 
strangest and yet the fittest thing in the jumble of human vicissi- 
tudes, that he, out of so many millions, unlocked for, unselected by 
any inteUigible process that could be based upon his genuine quaU- 
ties, unknown to those who chose him, and unsuspected of what 
endowments may adapt him for his tremendous responsibility, 
should have found the way open for him to fling his lank person- 
ahty into the chair of state, — where, I presume, it was his first 
impulse to throw his legs on the council-table, and tell the Cabinet 
Ministers a story. There is no describing his lengthy awkward- 
ness, nor the uncouthness of his movement ; and yet it seemed as 
if I had been in the habit of seeing him daily, and had shaken 
hands with him a thousand times in some village street ; so 
true was he to the aspect of the pattern American, though 
with a certain extravagance which, possibly, I exaggerated still 
further by the delighted eagerness with which I took it in. If put 
to guess his calling and liveHhood, I should have taken him for 
a country schoolmaster as soon as anything else. He was dressed in 
a rusty black frock-coat and pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so 
faithfully that the suit had adapted itself to the curves and angulari- 
ties of his figure, and had grown to be an outer skin of the man. 
He had shabby slippers on his feet. His hair was black, still un- 
mixed with gray, stiff, somewhat bushy, and had apparently been 
acquainted with neither brush nor comb that morning, after the 
disarrangement of the pillow ; and as to a nightcap. Uncle Abe prob- 
ably knows nothing of such effeminacies. His complexion is dark 
and sallow, betokening, I fear, an insalubrious atmosphere around 
the White House; he has thick black eyebrows and an impending 

I ofC 



lOO YESTERDA YS WITH A UTHORS. 

brow; his nose is large, and the lines about his mouth are very 
strongly defined. 

" The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one as you would meet 
anywhere in the length and breadth of the States; but, withal, it 
is redeemed, illuminated, softened, and brightened by a kindly 
though serious look out of his eyes, and an expression of homely 
sagacity, that seems weighted with rich results of village experi- 
ence. A great deal of native sense ; no bookish cultivation, no re- 
finement ; honest at heart, and thoroughly so, and yet, in some sort, 
sly, — at least, endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are 
akin to craft, and would impel him, I think, to take an antagonist in 
flank, rather than to make a bull-run at him right in fi:ont. But, 
on the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the 
homely human sympathies that warmed it ; and, for my small share 
in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man 
whom it would have been practicable to put in his place. 

" Immediately on his entrance the President accosted our mem- 
ber of Congress, who had us in charge, and, with a comical twist of 
his face, made some jocular remark about the length of his breakfast. 
He then greeted us all round, not waiting for an introduction, but 
shaking and squeezing everybody's hand with the utmost cordiality, 
whether the individual's name was announced to him or not. His 
manner towards us was wholly without pretence, but yet had a kind 
of natural dignity, quite sufficient to keep the forwardest of us fi"om 
clapping him on the shoulder and asking for a story. A mutual ac- 
quaintance being established, our leader took the whip out of its 
case, and began to read the address of presentation. The whip was 
an exceedingly long one, its handle wrought in ivory (by some 
artist in the Massachusetts State Prison, I believe), and ornamented 
with a medallion of the President, and other equally beautiful devices ; 
and along its whole length there was a succession of golden bands and 
ferrules. The address was shorter than the whip, but equally well 
made, consisting chiefly of an explanatory description of these ar- 
tistic designs, and closing with a hint that the gift was a suggestive 
and emblematic one, and that the President would recognize the use 
to which such an instrument should be put. 

" This suggestion gave Uncle Abe rather a delicate task in his 
reply, because, slight as the matter seemed, it apparently called for 
some declaration, or intimation, or faint foreshadowing of policy in 
reference to the conduct of the war, and the final treatment of the 
Rebels. But the President's Yankee aptness and not-to-be-caught- 
ness stood him in good stead, and he jerked or wiggled himself out 



HAWTHORNE. roi 

of the dilemma with an uncouth dexterity that was entirely in 
character ; although, without his gesticulation of eye and mouth, — 
and especially the flourish of the whip, with which he imagined him- 
self touching up a pair of fat horses, — I doubt whether his words 
would be worth recording, even if I could remember them. The gist 
of the reply was, that he accepted the whip as an emblem of peace, 
not punishment ; and, this great aflfair over, we retired out of the 
presence in high good-humor, only regretting that we could not have 
seen the President sit down and fold up his legs (which is said to be 
a most extraordinary spectacle), or have heard him tell one of those 
delectable stories for which he is so celebrated. A good many 
of them are afloat upon the common talk of Washington, and are 
certainly the aptest, pithiest, and fiinniest little things imaginable ; 
though, to be sure, they smack of the frontier freedom, and would 
not always bear repetition in a drawing-room, or on the immaculate 
page of the Atlantic." 

So runs the passage wliicli caused some good-natured 
discussion nine years ago, between the contributor and 
the editor. Perhaps I was squeamish not to have been 
willing to print this matter at that time. Some persons, 
no doubt, will adopt that opinion, but as both President 
and author have long ago met on the other side of criti- 
cism and magazines, we will leave the subject to their 
decision, they being most interested in the transaction. 
I did what seemed best in 1862. In 1871 "circum- 
stances have changed " with both parties, and I venture 
to-day what I hardly dared then. 



Whenever I look at Hawthorne's portrait, and that is 
pretty often, some new trait or anecdote or reminis- 
cence comes up and clamors to be made known to those 
who feel an interest in it. But time and eternity call 
loudly for mortal gossip to be brief, and I must hasten to 
my last session over that child of genius, who first saw 
the Hght on the 4th of July, 1804. 

One of his favorite books was Lockhart's Life of Sir 



102 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Walter Scott, and in 1862 I dedicated to him the 
Household Edition of that work. When he received the 
first volume, he wrote to me a letter of which I am so 
proud that I keep it among my best treasures. 

" I am exceedingly gratified by the dedication. I do not deserve 
go high an honor ; but if you think me worthy, it is enough to make 
the comphment in the highest degree acceptable, no matter who 
may dispute my title to it. I care more for your good opinion 
than for that of a host of critics, and have an excellent reason for 
so doing ; inasmuch as my literary success, whatever it has been 
or may be, is the result of my connection with you. Somehow or 
other you smote the rock of public sympathy on my behalf, and a 
stream gushed forth in sufficient quantity to quench my thirst 
though not to drown me. I think no author can ever have had 
publisher that he valued so much as I do mine." 

He began in 1862 to send me some articles from his 
English Journal for the Atlantic magazine, which he 
afterwards collected into a volume and called " Our Old 
Home." On forwarding one for December of that year 
he says : — 

" I hope you will like it, for the subject seemed interesting to me 
when I was on the spot, but I always feel a singular despondency 
and heaviness of heart in reopening those old journals now. How- 
ever, if I can make readable sketches out of them, it is no matter." 

In the same letter he tells me he has been re-reading 
Scott's Life, and he suggests some additions to the con- 
cluding volume. He says : — 

"If the last volume is not already printed and stereotyped, I 
think you ought to insert in it an explanation of all that is left 
mysterious in the former volumes, — the name and family of the lady 
he was in love with, etc. It is desirable, too, to know what have 
been the fortunes and final catastrophes of his family and intimate 
friends since his death, down to as recent a period as the death of 
Lockhart. All such matter would make your edition more valuable ; 
and I see no reason why you should be bound by the deference to 
living connections of the family that may prevent the English pub- 
lishers from inserting these particulars. We stand in the light of 



HAWTHORNE. I03 

posterity to them, and have the privileges of posterity I 

ehould be glad to know something of the personal character and life 
of his eldest son, and w^hether (as I have heard) he was ashamed of 
his father for being a hterary man. In short, fifty pages devoted to 
such elucidation would make the edition unique. Do come and see 
us before the leaves fall." 

While he was engaged in copying out and rewriting his 
papers on England for the magazine he was despondent 
about their reception by the public. Speaking of them, 
one day, to me, he said : " "We must remember that there 
is a good deal of intellectual ice mingled with this wine 
of memory." He was sometimes so dispirited during the 
war that he was obliged to postpone his contributions for 
sheer lack of spirit to go on. Near the close of the year 
1862 he writes : — 

" I am delighted at what you teU me about the kind appreciation 
of my articles, for I feel rather gloomy about them myself I am 
really much encouraged by what you say ; not but what I am sensi- 
ble that you mollify me with a good deal of soft soap, but it is skQ- 

fully applied and effects all you intend it should I cannot come 

to Boston to spend more than a day, just at present. It would suit 
me better to come for a visit when the spring of next year is a little 
advanced, and if you renew your hospitable proposition then, I 
shall probably be glad to accept it; though I have now been a 
hermit so long, that the thought affects me somewhat as it would to 
invite a lobster or a crab to step out of his shell." 

He continued, during the early months of 1863, to 
send now and then an article for the magazine from 
his English Note-Books. On the 2 2d of February he 
writes : — 

" Here is another article. I wish it would not be so wretchedly 
long, but there are many things which I shall find no opportu- 
nity to say unless I say them now ; so the article grows under my 
hand, and one part of it seems just about as well worth printing as 
another. Heaven sees fit to visit me with an unshakable conviction 
that all this series of articles is good for nothing ; but that is none 
of my business, provided the public and you are of a different opin- 
ion. If you think any part of it can be left out with advantage, 



104 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

you are quite at liberty to do so. Probably I have not put Leigh 
Hunt quite high enough for your sentiments respecting him ; but no 
more genuine characterization and criticism (so far as the writer's 
purpose to be true goes) was ever done. It is very slight. I might 
have made more of it, but should not have improved it. 

" I mean to write two more of these articles, and then hold my 
hand. I intend to come to Boston before the end of this week, if 
the weather is good. It must be nearly or quite six months since I 
was there ! I wonder how many people there are in the world who 
would keep their nerves in tolerably good order through such a 
length of nearly soUtary imprisonment ? " 

I advised him to begin to put the series in order for 
a volume, and to preface the book with his " Consular 
Experiences." On the 18th of April he writes: — 

" I don't think the public will bear any more of this sort of 

thing I had a letter from , the other day, in which he 

sends me the enclosed verses, and I think he would like to have 
them published in the Atlantic. Do it if you hke, I pretend to no 

judgment in poetry. He also sent this epithalamium by Mrs. , 

and I doubt not the good lady wUl be pleased to see it copied into 
one of our American newspapers with a few laudatory remarks. 
Can't you do it in the Transcript, and send her a copy ? You can- 
not imagine how a little praise jollifies us poor authors to the mar- 
row of our bones. Consider, if you had not been a publisher, you 
would certainly have been one of our wretched tribe, and therefore 
ought to have a fellow-feeling for us. Let Michael Angelo write the 
remarks, if you have not the time." 

(" Michael Angelo " was a clever little Irish-boy who 
had the care of my room. Hawthorne conceived a fancy 
for the lad, and liked to hear stories of his smart replies 
to persistent authors who called during my absence with 
unpromising-looking manuscripts.) On the 30th of 
April he writes : — 

" I send the article with which the volume is to commence, and 
you can begin printing it whenever you like. I can think of no 
better title than this, ' Our Old Home ; a Series of Enghsh 
Sketches, by,' etc. I submit to your judgment whether it would 
not be well to print these * Consular Experiences ' in the volume 



HA WTHORNE. xo$ 

without depriving them of any freshness they may have by previ- 
ous pubHcation in the magazine ? 

*' The article has some of the features that attract the curiosity of 
the fooUsh pubhc, being made up of personal narrative and gossip, 
with a few pungencies of personal satire, which will not be the less 
effective because the reader can scarcely find out who was the indi- 
vidual meant. I am not without hope of drawing down upon my- 
self a good deal of critical severity on this score, and would gladly 
incur more of it if I could do so without seriously deserving cen- 
sure. 

" The story of the Doctor of Divinity, I think, will prove a good 
card in this way. It is every bit true (like the other anecdotes), only 
not told so darkly as it might have been for the reverend gentleman. 
I do not believe there is any danger of his identity being ascertained, 
and do not care whether it is or no, as it could only be done by the 
impertinent researches of other people. It seems to me quite essen- 
tial to have some novelty in the collected volume, and, if possible, 
something that may excite a little discussion and remark. But de- 
cide for yourself and me ; and if you conclude not to publish it in 
the magazine, I think I can concoct another article in season for the 
August number, if you wish. After the publication of the volume, 
it seems to me the public had better have no more of them. 

" J has been telling us a mythical story of your uitending to 

walk with him from Cambridge to Concord. We should be delighted 
to see you, though more for our own sakes than yours, for our as- 
pect here is still a little winterish. When you come, let it be on 
Saturday, and stay till Monday. I am hungry to talk with you." 

I was enchanted, of course, with the " Consular Expe- 
riences," and find from his letters, written at that time, 
that he was made specially happy by the encomiums I 
could not help sending upon that inimitable sketch. 
When the " Old Home " was nearly all in type, he began 
to think about a dedication to the book. On the 3d of 
May he writes : — 

" I am of three minds about dedicating the volume. First, it 
seems due to Frank Pierce (as he put me into the position where I 
made all those profound observations of English scenery, life, and 
character) to inscribe it to him with a few pages of friendly and ex- 
planatory talk, which also wou'id be very gratifying to my own life- 
long affection for him. 
5* 



io6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

" Secondly, I want to say something to Bennoch to show him 
that I am thoroughly mindful of all his hospitality and kindness ; 
and I suppose he might be pleased to see his name at the head of a 
book of mine. 

" Thirdly, I am not convinced that it is worth while to inscribe it 
to anybody. We will see hereafter." 

The book moved on slowly through the press, and he 
seemed more than commonly nervous about the proof- 
sheets. On the 28th of May he says in a note to me : — 

" In a proof-sheet of * Our Old Home ' which I sent you to-day 
(page 43, or 4, or 5 or thereabout) I corrected a line thus, ' possessing 
a happy faculty of seeing my own interest.' Now as the public in- 
terest was my sole and individual object while I held office, I think 
that as a matter of scanty justice to myself, the line ought to stand 
thus, ' possessing a happy faculty of seeing my own interest and the 
public's.' Even then, you see, I only give myself credit for half the 
disinterestedness I really felt Pray, by all means, have it altered as 
above, even if the page is stereotyped ; which it can't have been, as 
the proof is now in the Concord post-office, and you will have it at 
the same time with this. 

" We are getting into full leaf here, and your walk with J 

might come oflf any time." 

An arrangement was made with the liberal house of 
Smith and Elder, of London, to bring out "Our Old 
Home " on the same day of its publication in Boston. 
On the 1st of July Hawthorne wrote to me from the 
Wayside as follows : — 

*' I am delighted with Smith and Elder, or rather with you ; for 
it is you that squeeze the English sovereigns out of the poor devils. 
On my own behalf I never could have thought of asking more than 
£50, and should hardly have expected to get £10; I look upon 
the £ 180 as the only trustworthy funds I have, our own money 
being of such a gaseous consistency. By the time I can draw for 
it, I expect it will be worth at least fifteen hundred dollars. 

" I shall think over the prefatory matter for ' Our Old Home ' to- 
day, and will write it to-morrow. It requires some little thought 
and policy in order to say nothing amiss at this time ; for I intend 
to dedicate the book to Frank Pierce, come what may. It shall 
reach you on Friday morning. 



HA WTHORNE. 107 

" We find a comfortable and desirable guest to have in 

the house. My wife Ukes her hugely, and for my part, I had no 
idea that there was such a sensible woman of letters in the 
world. She is just as healthy-minded as if she had never touched 
a pen. I am glad she had a pleasant time, and hope she will come 
back. 

" I mean to come to Boston whenever I can be sure of a cool 
day. 

'• What a prodigious length of time you stayed among the moun- 
tains ! 

" You ought not to assume such liberties of absence without the 
consent of your friends, which I hardly think you would get. I, at 
least, want you always within attainable distance, even though I 
never see you. Why can't you come and stay a day or two with 
us, and drink some spruce beer? " 

Those were troublous days, full of war gloom and 
general despondency. The North was naturally suspi- 
cious of all public men, who did not bear a conspicuous 
part in helping to put down the Eebellion. General 
Pierce had been President of the United States, and was 
not identified, to say the least, with the great party which 
favored the vigorous prosecution of the war. Hawthorne 
proposed to dedicate his new book to a very dear friend, 
indeed, but in doing so he would draw public attention in. 
a marked way to an unpopular name. Several of Haw- 
thorne's friends, on learning that he intended to inscribe 
his book to Franklin Pierce, came to me and begged that 
I would, if possible, help Hawthorne to see that he ought 
not to do anything to jeopardize the currency of his new 
volume. Accordingly I wrote to him, just what many 
of his friends had said to me, and this is his reply to my 
letter, which bears date the 18th of July, 1863 ; — 

" I thank you for your note of the 15th instant, and have delayed 
my reply thus long in order to ponder deeply on your advice, 
smoke cigars over it, and see what it might be possible for me to 
do towards taking it. I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery 
in me to withdraw either the dedication or the dedicatory letter. 
My long and intimate personal relations with Pierce render the 



io8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

dedication altogether proper, especially as regards this book, which 
would have had no existence without his kindness ; and if he is so 
exceedingly unpopular that his name is enough to sink the volume, 
there is so much the more need that an old friend should stand by 
him. I cannot, merely on account of pecuniary profit or Uterary 
reputation, go back from what I have deliberately felt and thought 
it right to do ; and if I were to tear out the dedication, I should 
never look at the volume again without remorse and shame. As 
for the literary pubhc, it must accept my book precisely as I think 
fit to give it, or let it alone. 

" Nevertheless, I have no fancy for making myself a martyr when 
it is honorably and conscientiously possible to avoid it ; and I al- 
ways measure out my heroism very accurately according to the 
exigencies of the occasion, and should be the last man in the world 
to throw away a bit of it needlessly. So I have looked over the 
concluding paragraph and have amended it in such a way that, 
whOe doing what I know to be justice to my fi-iend, it contains not 
a word that ought to be objectionable to any set of readers. If the 
public of the North see fit to ostracize me for this, I can only say 
that I would gladly sacrifice a thousand or two of dollars rather 
than retain the good-will of such a herd of dolts and mean-spirited 
scoundrels. I enclose the rewritten paragraph, and shall wish to 
see a proof of that and the whole dedication. 

" I had a call from an Englishman yesterday, and kept him to 

dinner; not the threatened , but a Mr. , introduced by 

. He says he knows you, and he seems to be a very good 

fellow. 1 have strong hopes that he will never come back here 

again, for J took him on a walk of several miles, whereby they 

both caught a most tremendous ducking, and the poor Englishman 

was frightened half to death by the thunder On the other 

page is the list of presentation people, and it amounts to twenty-four, 
which your liberality and kindness allow me. As likely as not I 
have forgotten two or three, and I held my pen suspended over one 
or two of the names, doubting whether they deserved of me so 
especial a favor as a portion of my heart and brain. I have few 
friends. Some authors, I should think, would require half the edi- 
tion for private distribution." 

" Our Old Home " was published in the autumn of 
1863, and although it was everywhere welcomed, in 
England the strictures were applied with a liberal hand 
On the 18th of October he writes to me : — 



HAWTHORNE. 109 

" Tou sent me the ' Reader ' with a notice of the book, and I 
have received one or two others, one of them from Bennoch. The 
Enghsh critics seem to think me very bitter against their country- 
men, and it is, perhaps, natural that they should, because their self- 
conceit can accept nothing short of indiscriminate adulation ; but I 
really think that Americans have more cause than they to complain 
of me. Looking over the volume, I am rather surprised to find 
that whenever I draw a comparison between the two people, I 
almost invariably cast the balance against ourselves. It is not a 
good nor a weighty book, nor does it deserve any great amount 
either of praise or censure. I don't care about seeing any more 
notices of it." 

Meantime the "Dolliver Romance," which had been 
laid aside on account of the exciting scenes through 
which we were then passing, and which unfitted him for 
the composition of a work of the imagination, made lit- 
tle progress. In a note written to me at this time he' 
says : — 

" I can't tell you when to expect an instalment of the Romance, 
if ever. There is something preternatural in my reluctance to 
begin. I linger at the threshold, and have a perception of very dis- 
agreeable phantasms to be encountered if I enter. I wish God had 
given me the faculty of writing a sunshiny book." 

I invited him to come to Boston and have a cheerful 
week among his old friends, and threw in as an in- 
ducement a hint that he should hear the great organ in 
the Music Hall. I also suggested that we could talk 
over the new Romance together, if he would gladden us 
aU by coming to the city. Instead of coming, he sent 
this reply : — 

" I thank you for your kind invitation to hear the grand instru- 
ment ; but it offers me no inducement additional to what I should 
always have for a visit to your abode. I have no ear for an organ 
or a jewsharp, nor for any instrument between the two ; so you 
had better invite a worthier guest, and I will come another time, 

" I don't see much probability of my having the first chapter of 
the Romance ready so soon as you want it There are two or 



no YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

three chapters ready to be -written, but I am not yet robust enough 
to begin, and I feel as if I should never carry it through. 

" Besides, I want to prefix a little sketch of Thoreau to it, be- 
cause, from a tradition which he told me about this house of mine, 
I got the idea of a deathless man, which is now taking a shape very 
different from the original one. It seems the duty of a live literary 
man to perpetuate the memory of a dead one, when there is such 
fair opportunity as in this case : but how Thoreau would scorn me 
for thinking that I could perpetuate him I And I don't think so. 

" I can think of no title for the unborn Romance. Always here- 
tofore I have waited till it was quite complete before attempting to 
name it, and I fear I shall have to do so now. I wish you or Mrs. 
Fields would suggest one. Perhaps you may snatch a title out of 
the infinite void that will miraculously suit the book, and give me a 
needful impetus to write it. 

" I want a great deal of money I wonder how people 

manage to live economically. I seem to spend little or nothing, 
,and yet it will get very far beyond the second thousand, for the 
present year If it were not for these troublesome neces- 
sities, I doubt whether you would ever see so much as the first 
chapter of the new Romance. 

" Those verses entitled ' Weariness,' in the last magazine, seem 
to me profoundly touching. I too am weary, and begin to look 
ahead for the Wayside Inn." 

I had frequent accounts of Tiis ill health and changed 
appearance, but I supposed he would rally again soon, 
and become hale and strong before the winter fairly set 
in. But the shadows even then were about his pathway, 
and Allan Cunningham's lines, which he once quoted to 
me, must often have occurred to him, — 

*' Cauld 's the snaw at my head. 
And cauld at my feet, 
And the finger o' death 's at my een, 
Closing them to sleep." 

We had arranged together that the " Dolliver Eo- 
mance" should be first published in the magazine, in 
monthly instalments, and we decided to begin in the 
January number of 1864. On the 8th of November 
came a long letter from him : — 



--X. 



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HAWTHORNE. iii 

" I foresee that there is httle probabiHty of my getting the first 
chapter ready by the 15th, although I have a resolute purpose to 
Write it by the end of the month. It will be in time for the Feb- 
ruary number, if it turns out fit for publication at all. As to the 
title, we must defer settling that till the book is fully written, and 
meanwhile I see nothing better than to call the series of articles 
' Fragments of a Romance.' This will leave me to exercise greater 
freedom as to the mechanism of the story than I otherwise can, 
and without which I shall probably get entangled in my own plot. 
"When the work is completed in the magazine, I can fill up the gaps 
and make straight the crookednesses, and christen it with a fresh 
title. In this untried experiment of a serial work I desire not to 
pledge myself, or promise the public more than I may confidently 
expect to achieve. As regards the sketch of Thoreau, I am not 
ready to write it yet, but will mix him up with the life of The 
Wayside, and produce an autobiographical preface for the finished 
Romance. If the public like that sort of stufi^, I too find it pleasant 
and easy writing, and can supply a new chapter of it for every new 
volume, and that, moreover, without infringing upon my proper 
privacy. An old Quaker wrote me, the other day, that he had 
been reading my Introduction to the ' Mosses ' and the ' Scarlet 
Letter,' and felt as if he knew me better than his best friend ; but 
I think he considerably overestimates the extent of his intimacy 
with me. 

" I received several private letters and printed notices of ' Our Old 
Home ' from England. It is laughable to see the innocent wonder 
with which they regard my criticisms, accounting for them by jaun- 
dice, insanity, jealousy, hatred, on my part, and never admitting the 
least suspicion that there may be a particle of truth in them. The 
monstrosity of their self-conceit is such that anything short of 
unlimited admiration impresses them as malicious caricature. But 
they do me great injustice in supposing that I hate them. I would 
as soon hate my own people. 

" Tell Ticknor that I want a hundred dollars more, and I sup- 
pose I shall keep on wanting more and more till the end of my days. 
If I subside into the almshouse before my intellectual faculties are 
quite extinguished, it strikes me that I would make a very pretty 
book out of it ; and, seriously, if I alone were concerned, I should 
not have any great objection to winding up there." 

On the 14th of November came a pleasant little note 
from him, which seemed to have been written in better 



112 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

spirits than lie had shown of late. Photographs of him- 
seK always amused him greatly, and in the little note I 
refer to there is this pleasant passage : — 

"Here is the photograph, — a grandfatherly old figure enough; 
and I suppose that is the reason why you select it. 

" I am much in want of cartes de visite to distribute on my own 
account, and am tired and disgusted with all the undesirable like- 
nesses as yet presented of me. Don't you think I might sell my 
head to some photographer who would be willing to return me 
the value in small change ; that is to say, in a dozen or two of 
cards ? " 

The first part of Chapter I of "The DolUver Eo- 
mance " came to me from the Wayside on the 1st of 
December. Hawthorne was very anxious to see it in 
type as soon as possible, in order that he might compose 
the rest in a similar strain, and so conclude the prelimi- 
nary phase of Dr. Dolliver. He was constantly imploring 
me to send him a good pen, complaining all the while 
that everything had failed him in that line. In one of 
his notes begging me to hunt him up something that he 
could write with, he says : — 

" Nobody ever suffered more from pens than I have, and I am 
glad that my labor with the abominable little tool is drawing to a 
close." 

In the month of December Hawthorne attended the 
funeral of Mrs. Franklin Pierce, and, after the ceremony, 
came to stay with us. He seemed iU and more nervous 
than usual. He said he found General Pierce greatly 
needing his companionship, for he was overwhelmed with 
grief at the loss of his wife. I weU remember the sad- 
ness of Hawthorne's face when he told us he felt obliged 
to look on the dead. " It was," said he, " like a carven 
image laid in its richly embossed enclosure, and there 
was a remote expression about it as if the whole had 
nothing to do with things present." He told us, as an 
instance of the ever-constant courtesy of his friend Gen- 



HAWTHORNE. I13 

eral Pierce, that while they were standing at the grave, 
the General, though completely overcome with his own 
sorrow, turned and drew up the collar of Hawthorne's coat 
to shield him from the bitter cold. 

The same day, as the sunset deepened and we sat to- 
gether, Hawthorne began to talk in an autobiographical 
vein, and gave us the story of liis early life, of which I 
have already written somewhat. He said at an early 
age he accompanied his mother and sister to the town- 
ship in Maine, which his grandfather had purchased. 
That, he continued, was the happiest period of his Ufe, 
and it lasted through several years, when he was sent to 
school in Salem. "I lived in Maine," he said, "like a 
bird of the air, so perfect was the freedom I enjoyed. 
But it was there I first got my cursed habits of solitude." 
During the moonlight nights of winter he would skate 
until midnight all alone upon Sebago Lake, with the 
deep shadows of the icy hills on either hand. When he 
found himself far away from his home and weary with 
the exertion of skating, he would sometimes take refuge 
in a log-cabin, where half a tree would be burning on the 
broad hearth. He would sit in the ample chimney and 
look at the stars through the great aperture through 
which the flames went roaring up. " Ah," he said, " how 
weU I recall the summer days also, when, with my gun, 
I roamed at will through the woods of Maine. How sad 
middle life looks to people of erratic temperaments. 
Everything is beautiful in youth, for all things are allowed 
to it then." 

The early home of the Hawthornes in Maine must 
have been a lonely dwelling-place indeed. A year ago 
(May 12, 1870) the old place was visited by one who had 
a true feeling for Hawthorne's genius, and who thus 
graphically described the spot. 

" A little way off the main-travelled road in the town of Eay- 



114 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

mond there stood an old house which has much in common with 
houses of its day, but which is distinguished from them by the 
more evident marks of neglect and decay. Its unpainted walls are 
deeply stained by time. Cornice and window-ledge and threshold 
are fast falling with the weight of years. The fences were long 
since removed from all the enclosures, the garden-wall is broken 
down, and the garden itself is now grown up to pines whose 
shadows fall dark and heavy upon the old and mossy roof; fitting 
roof-trees for such a mansion, planted there by the hands of Nature 
herself, as if she could not realize that her darling child was ever tq 
go out from his early home. The highway once passed its door, 
but the location of the road has been changed ; and now the old 
house stands solitarily apart from the busy world. Longer than 1 
can remember, and I have never learned how long, this house has 
stood untenanted and wholly unused, except, for a few years, as a 
place of public worship ; but, for myself, and for all who know ita 
earlier history, it wUl ever have the deepest interest, for it was the 
early home of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

" Often have I, when passing through that town, turned asida 
to study the features of that landscape, and to reflect upon ths 
influence which his surroundings had upon the development of thi^ 
author's genius. A few rods to the north runs a little mill-stream, 
its sloping bank once covered with grass, now so worn and washed 
by the rains as to show but Uttle except yellow sand. Less than 
half a mile to the west, this stream empties into an arm of Sebago 
Lake. Doubtless, at the time the house was built, the forest was 
so much cut away in that direction as to bring into view the 
waters of the lake, for a mill was built upon the brook about half- 
way down the valley, and it is reasonable to suppose that a clearing 
was made from the mill to the landing upon the shore of the pond ; 
but the pines have so far regained their old dominion as completely 
to shut out the whole prospect in that direction. Indeed, the site 
afi"ords but a limited survey, except to the northwest. Across a 
narrow valley in that direction lie open fields and dark pine-covered 
slopes. Beyond these rise long ranges of forest-crowned hills, while 
in the far distance every hue of rock and tree, of field and grove, melts 
into the soft blue of Mount Washington. The spot must ever have 
had the utter loneUness of the pine forests upon the borders of our 
northern lakes. The deep silence and dark shadows of the old 
woods must have filled the imagination of a youth possessing 
Hawthorne's sensibility with images which later years could not 
dispel. 



HAWTHORNE. 115 

" To this place came the widowed mother of Hawthorne in com- 
pany with her brother, an original proprietor and one of the early 
settlers of the town of Raymond. This house was built for her, 
and here she lived with her son for several years in the most com- 
plete seclusion. Perhaps she strove to conceal here a grief which 
she could not forget. In what way, and to what extent, the sur- 
roundings of his boyhood operated in moulding the character and 
developing the genius of that gifted author, I leave to the reader to 
determine. I have tried simply to draw a faithful picture of his 
early home." 

On the 15th of December Hawthorne wrote to me : — 

" I have not yet had courage to read the DolUver proof-sheet, 
but will set about it soon, though with terrible reluctance, such as I 

never felt before I am most grateful to you for protecting 

me from that visitation of the elephant and his cub. If you happen 

to see Mr. of L , a young man who was here last summer, 

pray tell him anything that your conscience will let you, to induce 
him to spare me another visit, which I know he intended. I really 
am not well and cannot be disturbed by strangers without more 

suffering than it is worth while to endure. I thank Mrs. F 

and yourself for your kind hospitality, past and prospective. I 
never come to see you without feeling the better for it, but I must 
not test so precious a remedy too often." 

The new year found him incapacitated from writing 
much on the Romance. On the 17th of January, 1864, 
he says : — 

" I am not quite up to writing yet, but shall make an effort as soon 
as I see any hope of success. You ought to be thankful that (like 
most other broken-down authors) I do not pester you with decrepit 
pages, and insist upon your accepting them as full of the old spirit 
and vigor. That trouble, perhaps, still awaits you, after I shall have 
reached a further stage of decay. Seriously, my mind has, for the 
present, lost its temper and its fine edge, and I have an instinct 
that I had better keep quiet. Perhaps I shall have a new spirit of 
vigor, if I wait quietly for it ; perhaps not." 

The end of February found him in a mood which is 
best indicated in this letter, which he addressed to me on 
the 25th of the month : — 

*' I hardly know what to say to the public about this abortive 



ii6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Romance, though I know pretty well what the case will be. I 
shall never finish it. Yet it is not quite pleasant for an author to 
announce himself, or to be announced, as finally broken down as to 
his literary faculty. It is a pity that I let you put this work in 
your programme for the year, for I had always a presentiment that 
it would fail us at the pinch. Say to the public what you think 
best, and as little as possible ; for example : ' "We regret that Mr. 
Hawthorne's Romance, announced for this magazine some months 
ago, still lies upon the author's writing-table, he having been inter- 
rupted in his labor upon it by an impaired state of health ' ; or, 
' We are sorry to hear (but know not whether the public will share 
our grief) that Mr. Hawthorne is out of health and is thereby pre- 
vented, for the present, from proceeding with another of his 
promised (or threatened) Romances, intended for this magazine ' ; 
or, ' Mr. Hawthorne's brain is addled at last, and, much to our 
satisfaction, he tells us that he cannot possibly go on with the Ro- 
mance announced on the cover of the January magazine. We con- 
sider him finally shelved, and shall take early occasion to bury him 
under a heavy article, carefully summing up his merits (such as they 
were) and his demerits, what few of them can be touched upon in 
our limited space ' ; or, ' We shall commence the publication of Mr. 
Hawthorne's Romance as soon as that gentleman chooses to for- 
ward it. We are quite at a loss how to account for this delay in 
the fulfilment of his contract ; especially as he has already been 
most liberally paid for the first number.' Say anything you like, 
in short, though I really don't believe that the public will care what 
you say or whether you say anything. If you choose, you may 
publish the first chapter as an insulated fragment, and charge me 
with the overpayment. I cannot finish it unless a great change 
comes over me ; and if I make too great an efibrt to do so, it will 
be my death ; not that I should care much for that, if I could fight 
the battle through and win it, thus ending a hfe of much smoulder 
and scanty fire in a blaze of glory. But I should smother myself 
in mud of my own making. I mean to come to Boston soon, not 
for a week but for a single day, and then I can talk about my sani- 
tary prospects more freely than I choose to write. I am not low- 
spirited, nor fanciful, nor freakish, but look what seem to be reaUties 
in the face, and am ready to take whatever may come. If I could 
but go to England now, I think that the sea voyage and the ' Old 
Home ' might set me all right. 

" This letter is for your own eye, and I wish especially that no 
8cho of it may come back in your notes to me. 



I 



HAWTHORNE. 117 

" P. S. Give my kindest regards to Mrs. F , and tell her 

that one of my choicest ideal places is her drawing-room, and there- 
fore I seldom visit it." 

On Monday, the 28th of March, Hawthorne came to 
town and made my house his first station on a journey 
to the South for health. I was greatly shocked at his 
invalid appearance, and he seemed quite deaf The light 
in his eye was beautiful as ever, but his limbs seemed 
shrunken and his usual stalwart vigor utterly gone. He 
said to me with a pathetic voice, " Why does Nature treat 
us like little children ! I think we could bear it all if we 
knew our fate ; at least it would not make much differ- 
ence to me now what became of me." Toward night he 
brightened up a little, and his delicious wit flashed out, 
at intervals, as of old ; but he was evidently broken and 
dispirited about his health. Looking out on the bay that 
was sparkling in the moonlight, he said he thought the 
moon rather lost something of its charm for him as he 
grew older. He spoke with great delight of a little story, 
called " Pet Marjorie," and said he had read it carefully 
through twice, every word of it. He had much to say 
about England, and observed, among other things, that 
" the extent over which her dominions are spread leads 
her to fancy herself stronger than she really is ; but she is 
not to-day a powerful empire ; she is much like a squash- 
vine, which runs over a whole garden, but, if you cut it 
at the root, it is at once destroyed." At breakfast, next 
morning, he spoke of his kind neighbors in Concord, and 
said Alcott was one of the most excellent men he had 
ever known. " It is impossible to quarrel with him, for 
he would take all your harsh words like a saint." 
*' He left us shortly after this for a journey to "Washing- 
ton, with his friend Mr. Ticknor. The travellers spent 
several days in New York, and then proceeded to Phila- 
delphia. Hawthorne wrote to me from the Continental 



ii8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Hotel, dating Lis letter " Saturday evening," announcing 
the severe illness of his companion. He did not seem to 
anticipate a fatal result, but on Sunday morning the news 
came that Mr. Ticknor was dead. Hawthorne returned 
at once to Boston, and stayed here over night. He was 
in a very excited and nervous state, and talked incessantly 
of the sad scenes he had just been passing through. "We 
sat late together, conversing of the friend we had lost, 
and I am sure he hardly closed his eyes that night. In 
the morning he went back to his own home in Concord. 

His health, from that time, seemed to give way rapidly, 
and in the middle of May his friend. General Pierce, pro- 
posed that they should go among the New Hampshire 
hill s together and meet the spring there. 

The first letter we received from Mrs. Hawthorne* 
after her husband's return to Concord in April gave us 
great anxiety. It was dated " Monday eve," and here are 
some extracts from it : — 

" I have just sent Mr. Hawthorne to bed, and so have a moment 
to speak to you. Generally it has been late and I have not liked to 
disturb him by sitting up after him, and so I could not write since 
he returned, though I wished very much to tell you about him, 
ever since he came home. He came back unlooked for that day ; 
and when I heard a step on the piazza, I was lying on a couch and 
feeling quite indisposed. But as soon as I saw him I was frightened 
out of all knowledge of myself, — so haggard, so white, so deeply 

* As I write this paragraph, my friend, the Reverend James Freeman 
Clarke, puts into my hand the following note, which Hawthorne sent 
to him nearly thirty years ago : — 

54 PracKWET Street, Friday, Jvily 8, 1842. 
My dear Sir, — Though personally a stranger to you, I am about to request 
of you the greatest favor which I can receive from any man. I am to be mar- 
ried to Miss Sophia Peabody; and it is our mutual desire that you should per- 
form the ceremony. Unless it should be decidedly a rainy day, a carriage will 
call for you at half past eleven o'clock in the forenoon. 
Very respectfully yours, 

Nath. Hawthobhk. 
Rev. James F. Clarke, Chestnut Street. 



HAWTHORNE. 119 

scored with pain and fatigue was the face, so much more ill he 
looked than I ever saw him before. He had walked from the sta- 
tion because he saw no carriage there, and his brow was streaming 

with a perfect rain, so great had been the effort to walk so far 

He needed much to get home to me, where he could fling off all 
care of himself and give way to his feehngs, pent up and kept 
back for so long, especially since his watch and ward of most 
excellent, kind Mr. Ticknor. It relieved him somewhat to break 

down as he spoke of that scene But he was so weak and 

weary he could not sit up much, and lay on the couch nearly all the 
time in a kind of uneasy somnolency, not wishing to be read to 
even, not able to attend or fix his thoughts at aU. On Saturday he 
Tinfortunately took cold, and, after a most restless night, was seized 
early in the morning with a very bad stiff neck, which was acutely 
painful all Sunday. Sunday night, however, a compress of linen 
wrung in cold water cured him, with belladonna. But he slept 

also most of this morning He could as easily build London 

as go to the Shakespeare dinner. It tires him so much to get 
entirely through his toilet in the morning, that he has to lie down a 
long time after it. To-day he walked out on the grounds, and 
could not stay ten minutes, because I would not let him sit down 
in the wind, and he could not bear any longer exercise. He has 
more than lost all he gained by the journey, by the sad event. 
From being the nursed and cared for, — early to bed and late to 
rise, — led, as it were, by the ever-ready hand of kind Mr. Ticknor, 
to become the nurse and night-watcher with all the responsibilities, 
with his mighty power of sympathy and his vast apprehension of 
suffering in others, and to see death for the first time in a state sa 
weak as his, — the death also of so valued a friend, — as Mr. Haw- 
thorne says himself, ' it told upon him ' fearfully. There are lines 

ploughed on his brow which never were there before I have 

been up and alert ever since his return, but one day I was obliged, 
when he was busy, to run off and lie down for fear I should drop 
before his eyes. My head was in such an agony I could not endure 
it another moment. But I am well now. I have wrestled and 
won, and now I think I shall not fail again. Your most generous 
kindness of hospitahty I heartily thank you for, but Mr. Hawthorne 
Bays he cannot leave home. He wants rest, and he says when the 
wind is warm he shall feel well. This cold wind ruins him. I 
wish he were in Cuba or on some isle in the Gulf Stream. But I 
must say I could not think him able to go anywhere, unless I could 
go with him. He is too weak to take care of himself I do not 



120 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

like to have him go up and down stairs alone. I have read to him 
all the afternoon and evening and after he walked in the morning 
to-day. I do nothing but sit with him, ready to do or not to do, just 
as he wishes. The wheels of my small menage are all stopped. 
He is my world and aU the business of it. He has not smiled 
since he came home tUl to-day, and I made him laugh with Thack- 
eray's humor in reading to him ; but a smile looks strange on a face 
that once shone like a thousand suns with smiles. The light for 
the time has gone out of his eyes, entirely. An infinite weariness 
films them quite. I thank Heaven that summer and not winter 
approaches." 

On Friday evening of the same week Mrs. Hawthorne 
sent off another despatch to ns : — 

" Mr. Hawthorne has been miserably ill for two or three days, so 
that I could not find a moment to speak to you. I am most 
anxious to have him leave Concord again, and General Pierce's 
plan is admirable, now that the G-eneral is well himself I think the 
serene jog-trot in a private carriage into country places, by trout- 
streams and to old farm-houses, away fi:om care and news, wiU be 
very restorative. The boy associations with the General will 
refiresh him. They will fish, and muse, and rest, and saunter upon 
horses' feet, and be in the air aU the time in fine weather. I am 
quite content, though I wish I could go for a few lietits soins. But 
General Pierce has been a most tender, constant nurse for many 
years, and knows how to take care of the sick. And his love for 
Mr. Hawthorne is the strongest passion of his soul, now his wife is 
departed. They will go to the Isles of Shoals together probably, 
before their return. 

" Mr. Hawthorne cannot walk ten minutes now without wishing 
to sit down, as I think I told you, so that he cannot take sufficient 
air except in a carriage. And his horror of hotels and rail-cars is 
immense, and human beings beset him in cities. He is indeed very 
weak. I hardly know what takes away his strength. I now am 
obliged to superintend my workman, who is arranging the grounds. 
Whenever my husband lies down (which is sadly often) I rush out 
of doors to see what the gardener is about. 

"I cannot feel rested till Mr. Hawthorne is better, but I get 
along. I shall go to town when he is safe in the care of General 
Pierce." 

On Saturday'- this communication from ]\Irs. Hawthorne 
reached us : — 




^:k^t^ (^ v^^&=^5^^^^5^>^^^. 



HAWTHORNE. 121 

" General Pierce -wrote yesterday to say lie wished to meet Mr. 
Hawthorne in Boston on Wednesday, and go from thence on their 
way. 

" Mr. Hawthorne is much weaker, I find, than he has been before 
at any time, and I shall go down with him, having a great many 
things to do in Boston ; but I am sure he is not fit to be left by him- 
self, for his steps are so uncertain, and his eyes are very uncertain 
too. Dear Mr. Fields, I am very anxious about him, and I write 
now to say that he absolutely refuses to see a physician officially, 
and so I wish to know whether Dr. Holmes could not see him in 
some ingenious way on Wednesday as a friend ; but with his expe- 
rienced, acute observation, to look at him also as a physician, to note 
how he is and what he judges of him comparatively since he last 
saw him. It almost deprives me of my wits to see him growing 
weaker with no aid. He seems quite bilious, and has a restlessness 
that is infinite. His look is more distressed and harassed than 
before ; and he has so little rest, that he is getting worn out. I 
hope immensely in regard of this sauntering journey with General 
Pierce. 

" I feel as if I ought not to speak to you of anything when you 
are so busy and weary and bereaved. But yet in such a sad 
emergency as this, I am sure your generous, kind heart will not 

refuse me any help you can render I wish Dr. Holmes 

would feel his pulse ; I do not know how to judge of it, but it 
seems to me irregular." 

His friend, Dr. 0. W. Holmes, in compliance with 
Mrs. Hawthorne's desire, expressed in this letter to me, 
saw the invalid, and thus describes his appearance in an 
article full of tenderness and feeling which was published 
in the " Atlantic Monthly " for July, 1864 : — 

" Late in the afternoon of the day before he left Boston on his 
last journey I called upon him at the hotel where he was staying. 
He had gone out but a moment before. Looking along the street, I 
saw a form at some distance in advance which could only be his, — 
but how changed from his former port and figure I There was no 
mistaking the long iron-gray locks, the carriage of the head, and 
the general look of the natural outlines and movement; but he 
Beemed to have shrunken in all his dimensions, and faltered along 
with an uncertain, feeble step, as if every movement were an effort. 
I joined him, and we walked together half an hour, during which 
6 



122 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

time I learned so much of his state of mind and body as could b» 
got at without worrying him with suggestive questions, — my 
object being to form an opinion of his condition, as I had been 
requested to do, and to give him some hints that might be useful to 
him on his journey. 

" His aspect, medically considered, was very unfavorable. There 
were persistent local symptoms, referred especially to the stomach, 
— ' boring pain,' distension, difficult digestion, with great wasting 
of flesh and strength. He was very gentle, very willing to answer 
questions, very docile to such counsel as I offered him, but evident- 
ly had no hope of recovering his health. He spoke as if his work 
were done, and he should write no more. 

" With aU his obvious depression, there was no faihng noticeable 
in his conversational powers. There was the same backwardness 
and hesitancy which in his best days it was hard for him to over- 
come, so that talking with him was almost like love-making, and 
his shy, beautiful soul had to be wooed from its bashful prudency 
like an unschooled maiden. The calm despondency with which he 
spoke about himself confirmed the unfavorable opinion suggested 
by his look and history." 

I saw Hawthorne alive, for the last time, the day he 
started on this his last mortal journey. His speech and 
his gait indicated severe illness, and I had great misgiv- 
ings about the jaunt he was proposing to take so early in 
the season. His tones were more subdued than ever, and 
he scarcely spoke above a whisper. He was very affec- 
tionate in parting, and I followed him to the door, look- 
ing after him as he went up School Street. I noticed 
that he faltered from weakness, and I should have taken 
my hat and joined him to offer my arm, but I knew he 
did not wish to seem ill, and I feared he might be troubled 
at my anxiety. Fearing to disturb him, I followed him 
with my eyes only, and watched him till he turned the 
corner and passed out of sight. 

On the morning of the 19th of May, 1864, a telegram, 
signed by Franklin Pierce, stunned us all. It announced 
the death of Hawthorne. In the afternoon of the same 
day came this letter to me : — 



HAWTHORNE. 123 

" Pkmigewasset House, Plymouth, N. H., 
Thursday morning, 5 o'clock. 

" Mt dear Sir, — The telegraph has communicated to you the 
fact of our dear friend Hawthorne's death. My friend Colonel 

Hibbard, who bears this note, was a friend of H , and will tell 

you more than I am able to write. 

" I enclose herewith a note which I commenced last evening to 
dear Mrs. Hawthorne. 0, how will she bear this shock ! Dear 
mother — dear children — 

" When I met Hawthorne in Boston a week ago, it was apparent 
that he was much more feeble and more seriously diseased than I 
had supposed him to be. We came from Centre Harbor yesterday 
afternoon, and I thought he was on the whole brighter than he was 
the day before. Through the week he had been incUned to som- 
nolency during the day, but restless at night. He retired last night 
soon after nine o'clock, and soon fell into a quiet slumber. In less 
than half an hour changed his position, but continued to sleep. I 
left the door open between his bedroom and mine, — our beds 
being opposite to each other, — and was asleep myself before eleven 
o'clock. The light continued to burn in my room. At two o'clock, 

I went to H 's bedside ; he was apparently in a sound sleep, 

and I did not place my hand upon him. At four o'clock I went 
into his room again, and, as his position was unchanged, I placed 
my hand upon him and found that life was extinct. I sent, how- 
ever, immediately for a physician, and called Judge Bell and Colonel 
Hibbard, who occupied rooms upon the same floor and near me. 
He lies upon his side, his position so perfectly natural and easy, his 
eyes closed, that it is difficult to reaUze, while looking upon his 
noble face, that this is death. He must have passed from natural 
slumber to that from which there is no waking without the shghtest 
movement. 

" I cannot write to dear Mrs. Hawthorne, and you must exercise 
your judgment with regard to sending this and the unfinished note, 
enclosed, to her, 

" Tour friend, 

"Franklin Pieroe," 

Hawthorne's lifelong desire that the end might he a 
sudden one was gratified. Often and often he has said to 
me, " What a blessing to go quickly ! " So the same 
swift angel that came as a messenger to AUston, Irving, 



124 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Prescott, Macaulay, Thackeray, and Dickens was com- 
missioned to touch his forehead, also, and beckon him 
away. 

The room in which death fell upon him, 

" Like a shadow thrown 
Softly and lightly from a passing cloud," 

looks toward the east ; and standing in it, as I have fre- 
quently done, since he passed out silently into the skies, 
it is easy to imagine the scene on that spring morning 
which President Pierce so feelingly describes in his letter. 
On the 24th of May we carried Hawthorne through the 
blossoming orchards of Concord, and laid him down under 
a group of pines, on a hillside, overlooking historic fields. 
All the way from the village church to the grave the 
birds kept up a perpetual melody. The sun shone 
brightly, and the air was sweet and pleasant, as if 
death had never entered the world. Longfellow and 
Emerson, Channing and Hoar, Agassiz and Lowell, 
Greene and Whipple, Alcott and Clarke, Holmes and 
Hillard, and other friends whom he loved, walked slowly 
by his side that beautiful spring morning. The compan- 
ion of his youth and his manhood, for whom he would 
willingly, at any time, have given up his own life, 
Franklin Pierce, was there among the rest, and scattered 
flowers into the grave. The unfinished Eomance, which 
bad cost him so much anxiety, the last literary work on 
which he had ever been engaged, was laid on his cofl&n. 

" Ah ! who shall lift that wand of magic power, 
And the lost clew regain ? 
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower 
Unfinished must remain." 

Longfellow's beautiful poem will always be associated 
with the memory of Hawthorne, and most fitting was it 
that his fellow-student, whom he so loved and honored, 
should sing his requiem. 



DICKENS, 



" O friend with heart as gentle for distress^ 
As resolute with wise true thoughts to bind 
The happiest with the unhappiest of our kind.^' 

JOHN FORSTER. 

" All men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a strange 
emblem of every man's ; and Human Portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all 
pictures the welcomest on human walls'' — CARLYLE. 



rv. 

DICKENS. 

IOBSEEVE my favorite chair is placed to-day where 
the portraits of Charles Dickens are easiest seen, and 
I take the hint accordingly. Those are likenesses of him 
from the age of twenty-eight down to the year when he 
passed through "the golden gate," as that wise mystic 
William Blake calls death. One would hardly believe 
these pictures represented the same man ! See what a 
beautiful young person Maclise represents in this early 
likeness of the great author, and then contrast the face 
with that worn one in the photograph of 1869. The 
same man, but how different in aspect! I sometimes 
think, while looking at those two portraits, I must have 
known two individuals bearing the same name, at varioua 
periods of my own life. Let me speak to-day of the 
younger Dickens. How well I recall the bleak winter 
evening in 1842 when I first saw the handsome, glowing 
face of the young man who was even then famous over 
half the globe ! He came bounding into the Tremont 
House, fresh from the steamer that had brought him to 
our shores, and his cheery voice rang through the hall, as 
he gave a quick glance at the new scenes opening upon 
him in a strange land on first arriving at a Transatlantic 
hotel. " Here we are ! " he shouted, as the lights burst 
upon the merry party just entering the house, and several 
gentlemen came forward to greet him. Ah, how happy 
and buoyant he was then ! Young, handsome, almost 



128 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

worshipped for his genius, belted round by such troops of 
friends as rarely ever man had, coming to a new country 
to make new conquests of fame and honor, — surely it 
was a sight long to be remembered and never whoUy to 
be forgotten. The splendor of his endowments and the 
personal interest he had won to himself called forth all 
the enthusiasm of old and young America, and I am glad 
to have been among the first to witness his arrival. You 
ask me what was his appearance as he ran, or rather flew, 
up the steps of the hotel, and sprang into the hall. He 
seemed all on fire with curiosity, and alive as I never saw 
mortal before. From top to toe every fibre of his body 
was unrestrained and alert. "What vigor, what keenness, 
what freshness of spirit, possessed him ! He laughed aU 
over, and did not care who heard him ! He seemed like 
the Emperor of Cheerfulness on a cruise of pleasure, de- 
termined to conquer a realm or two of fun every hour of 
his overflowing existence. That night impressed itself on 
my memory for all time, so far as I am concerned with 
things sublunary. It was Dickens, the true " Boz," in 
flesh and blood, who stood before us at last, and with my 
companions, three or four lads of my own age, I deter- 
mined to sit up late that night, None of us then, of 
course, had the honor of an acquaintance with the delight- 
ful stranger, and I little thought that I should afterwards 
come to know him in the beaten way of friendship, and 
live with him day after day in years far distant ; that I 
should ever be so near to him that he would reveal to me 
his joys and his sorrows, and thus that I should learn the 
story of his life from his own lips. 

About midnight on that eventful landing, " Boz," — 
everybody called him "Boz" in those days, — having 
finished his supper, came down into the ofiice of the 

hotel, and, joining the young Earl of M , his feUow- 

voyager, saUied out for a first look at Boston streets. It 



DICKENS. 129 

was a stinging night, and the moon was at the full. 
Every object stood out sharp and glittering, and " Boz," 
muffled up in a shaggy fur coat, ran over the shining 
frozen snow, wisely keeping the middle of the street for 
the most part. We boys followed cautiously behind, but 
near enough not to lose any of the fun. Of course the 
two gentlemen soon lost their way on emerging into 
Washington from Tremont Street. Dickens kept up one 
continual shout of uproarious laughter as he went rapidly 
forward, reading the signs on the shops, and observing the 
"architecture" of the new country into which he had 
dropped as if from the clouds. When the two arrived 
opposite the " Old South Church " Dickens screamed. To 
this day I could never tell why. Was it because of its 
fancied resemblance to St. Paul's or the Abbey ? I de- 
clare firmly, the mystery of that shout is still a mystery 
to me ! 

The great event of Boz's first visit to Boston was the 
dinner of welcome tendered to him by the young men of 
the city. It is idle to attempt much talk about the ban- 
quet given on that Monday night in February, twenty- 
nine years ago. Papanti's Hall (where many of us learned 
to dance, under the guidance of that master of legs> now 
happily still among us and pursuing the same highly use- 
ful calling which he practised in 1842) was the scene of 
that festivity. It was a glorious episode in all our lives, 
and whoever was not there has suffered a loss not easy to 
estimate. We younger members of that dinner-party sat 
in the seventh heaven of happiness, and were translated 
into other spheres. Accidentally, of course, I had a seat 
just in front of the honored guest ; saw him take a pinch 
of snuff out of Washington Allston's box, and heard him 
joke with old President Quincy. Was there ever such a 
night before in our staid city ? Did ever mortal preside 
vrith such felicitous success as did Mr. Quincy ? How ho 

6* I 



I30 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

went on with his delicious compliments to our guest ! 
How he revelled in quotations from " Pickwick " and 
" Oliver Twist " and " The Curiosity Shop " ! And how 
admirably he closed his speech of welcome, calling up 
the young author amid a perfect volley of applause ! 
"Health, Happiness, and a Hearty "Welcome to Charles 
Dickens." I can see and hear Mr. Quincy now, as he 
spoke the words. Were ever heard such cheers before ? 
And when Dickens stood up at last to answer for him- 
self, so fresh and so handsome, with his beautiful eyes 
moist with feeling, and his whole frame aglow with ex- 
citement, how we did hurrah, we young fellows ! Trust 
me, it was a great night; and we must have made a 
mighty noise at our end of the table, for I remember 
frequent messages came down to us from the "Chair," 
begging that we would hold up a little and moderate if 
possible the rapture of our applause. 

After Dickens left Boston he went on his American 
travels, gathering up materials, as he journeyed, for his 
" American Notes." He was accompanied as far as New 
York by a very dear friend, to whom he afterwards ad- 
dressed several most interesting letters. For that friend 
he always had the warmest enthusiasm; and when he 
came the second time to America, there was no one of his 
old companions whom he missed more. Let us read some 
of these letters written by Dickens nearly thirty years 
ago. The friend to whom they were addressed was also 
an intimate and dear associate of mine, and his chil- 
dren have kindly placed at my disposal the whole corre- 
spondence. Here is the first letter, time-stained, but 
preserved with religious care. 

Fuller's Hotel, Washington, Monday, March 14, 1842. 

Mt dear Felton: I was more delighted than I can possibly 
tell you to receive (last Saturday night) your welcome letter. We 
and the oysters missed you terribly in New York. You carried 




C C j^-^, 



DICKENS. 131 

away with you more than half the deHght and pleasure of my New 
World ; and I heartily wish you could bring it back again. 

There are very interesting men in this place, — highly interesting, 
of course, — but it 's not a comfortable place ; is it ? If spittle 
could wait at table we should be nobly attended, but as that prop- 
erty has not been imparted to it in the present state of mechanical 
science, we are rather lonely and orphan-like, in respect of " being 
looked arter." A blithe black was introduced on our arrival, as our 
peculiar and especial attendant. He is the only gentleman in the 
town who has a peculiar delicacy in intruding upon my valuable 
time. It usually takes seven rings and a threatening message from 
to produce him ; and when he comes he goes to fetch some- 
thing, and, forgetting it by the way, comes back no more. 

We have been in great distress, really in distress, at the non-arrival 
of the Caledonia. You may conceive what our joy was, when, while 
we were dining out yesterday, H. arrived with the joyful intelligence 
of her safety. The very news of her having really arrived seemed 
to diminish the distance between ourselves and home, by one half 
at least. 

And this morning (though we have not yet received our heap of 
despatches, for which we are looking eagerly forward to this night's 
mail), — this morning there reached us unexpectedly, tlirough the 
government bag (Heaven knows how they came there), two of our 
many and long-looked-for letters, wherein was a circiunstantial 
account of the whole conduct and behavior of our pets ; with mar- 
vellous narrations of Charley's precocity at a Twelfth Night juve- 
nile party at Macready's ; and tremendous predictions of the gov- 
erness, dimly suggesting his having got out of pot-hooks and hangers, 
and darkly insinuating the possibility of his writing us a letter 
before long ; and many other workings of the same prophetic spirit, 
in reference to him and his sisters, very gladdening to their mother's 
heart, and not at all depressing to their father's. There was, also, 
the doctor's report, which was a clean biU ; and the nurse's report, 
which was perfectly electrifying; showing as it did how Master 
Walter had been weaned, and had cut a double tooth, and done 
many other extraordinary things, quite worthy of his high descent. 
In short, we were made very happy and grateful ; and felt as if the 
prodigal father and mother had got home again. 

What do you think of this incendiary card being left at my door 
last night ? " General Gr. sends compliments to Mr. Dickens, and 
called with two hterary ladies. As the two L. L.'s are ambitious 
of the honor of a personal introduction to Mr. D., General G. 



132 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

requests the honor of an appointment for to-morrow." I draw a 
veil over my sufferings. They are sacred. 

We have altered our route, and don't mean to go to Charles- 
ton, for I want to see the West, and have taken it into my 
head that as I am not obliged to go to Charleston, and don't 
exactly know why I should go there, I need do no violence 
to my own inclinations. My route is of Mr. Clay's designing, 
and T think it a very good one. We go on Wednesday night to 
Richmond in Virginia. On Monday we return to Baltimore for 
two days. On Thursday morning we start for Pittsburg, and so go 
by the Ohio to Cincinnati, Louisville, Kentucky, Lexington, St. 
Louis ; and either down the Lakes to Buffalo, or back to Philadel- 
phia, and by New York to that place, where we shall stay a week, 
and then make a hasty trip into Canada. We shall be in Buffalo, 
please Heaven, on the 30th of April. If I don't find a letter from 
you in the care of the postmaster at that place, I '11 never write to 
you from England. 

But if I do find one, my right hand shall forget its cunning, 
before I forget to be your truthfiil and constant correspondent ; not, 
dear Felton, because I promised it, nor because I have a natural 
tendency to correspond (which is far from being the case), nor 
because I am truly grateful to you for, and have been made truly 

proud by, that affectionate and elegant tribute which sent me, 

but because you are a man after my own heart, and I love you well. 
And for the love I bear you, and the pleasure with which I shall 
always think of you, and the glow I shall feel when I see your 
handwriting in my own home, I hereby enter into a solemn league 
and covenant to write as many letters to you as you write to me, at 
least. Amen. 

Come to England ! Come to England I Our oysters are small I 
know ; they are said by Americans to be coppery, but our hearts are 
of the largest size. We are thought to excel in shrimps, to be far 
from despicable in point of lobsters, and in periwinkles are considered 
to challenge the universe. Our oysters, small though they be, are 
not devoid of the refreshing influence which that species of fish is 
supposed to exercise in these latitudes. Try them and compare. 
Affectionately yours, 

Charles Dickens. 

His next letter is dated from Niagara, and I know 
every one will relish his allusion to oysters with wet 
feet, and his reference to the squeezing of a Quaker. 



DICKENS. 133 

Clifton House, Niagara Falls, 29th April, 1842. 

Mt dear Felton: Before 1 go any farther, let me explain to 
you what these great enclosures portend, lest — supposing them 
part and parcel of my letter, and asking to be read — you shall fall 
into fits, from which recovery might be doubtful. 

They are, as you will see, four copies of the same thing. The 
nature of the document you will discover at a glance. As I hoped 
and believed, the best of the British brotherhood took fire at my 
being attacked because I spoke my mind and theirs on the subject 
of an international copyright; and with all good speed, and hearty 
private letters, transmitted to me this small parcel of gauntlets for 
immediate casting down. 

Now my first idea was, publicity being the object, to send one 
copy to you for a Boston newspaper, another to Bryant for his 
paper, a third to the New York Herald (because of its large circu- 
lation), and a fourth to a highly respectable journal at Washington 
(the property of a gentleman, and a fine fellow named Seaton, 
whom I knew there), which I think is called the Intelligencer. 
Then the Knickerbocker stepped into my mind, and then it occurred 
to me that possibly the North American Review might be the best 
organ after all, because indisputably the most respectable and hon- 
orable, and the most concerned in the rights of literature. 

Whether to limit its publication to one journal, or to extend it to 
several, is a question so very difficult of decision to a stranger, that 
I have finally resolved to send these papers to you, and ask you 
(mindful of the conversation we had on this head one day, in that 
renowned oyster-ceUar) to resolve the point for me. Tou need feel 
no weighty sense of responsibility, my dear Felton, for whatever 
you do is sure to please me. If you see Sumner, take him into our 
councils. The only two things to be borne in mind are, first, that if 
they be published in several quarters, they must be published in all 
simultaneously ; secondly, that I hold them in trust, to put them 
before the people. 

I fear this is imposing a heavy tax upon your friendship ; and I 
don't fear it the less, by reason of being well assured that it is one 
you wiU most readily pay. I shall be in Montreal about the 11th 
of May. WiU you write to me there, to the care of the Earl of 
Mulgrave, and tell me what you have done ? 

So much for that. Bisness first, pleasure artervards, as King 
Richard the Third said ven he stabbed the tother king in the 
Tower, afore he murdered the babbies. 

I have long suspected that oysters have a rheumatic tendency. 



134 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Their feet are always wet; and so much damp company in a man's 
inside cannot contribute to his peace. But whatever the cause of 
your indisposition, we are truly grieved and pained to hear of it, 
and should be more so, but that we hope from your account of that 
farewell dinner, that you are all right again. I did receive Long- 
fellow's note. Sumner I have not yet heard from ; for which 
reason I am constantly bringing telescopes to bear on the ferry- 
boat, in hopes to see him coming over, accompanied by a modest 
portmanteau. 

To say anything about this wonderful place would be sheer non- 
sense. It far exceeds my most sanguine expectations, though the 
impression on my mind has been, from the first, nothing but beauty 
and peace. I have n't drunk the water. Bearing in mind your 
caution, I have devoted myself to beer, whereof there is an exceed- 
ingly pretty fall in this house. 

One of the noble hearts who sat for the Cheeryble brothers is 
dead. If I had been in England, I would certainly have gone into 
mourning for the loss of such a glorious hfe. His brother is not 
expected to survive him. I am told that it appears from a memo- 
randum found among the papers of the deceased, that in his life- 
time he gave away in charity £ 600,000, or three millions of 
doUars ! 

What do you say to my acting at the Montreal Theatre ? I am 
an old hand at such matters, and am going to join the officers of the 
garrison in a pubUc representation for the benefit of a local charity. 
We shall have a good house, they say. I am going to enact one 
Mr. Snobbington in a fimny farce called A Grood Night's Rest. I 
shall want a flaxen wig and eyebrows; and my nightly rest is 
broken by visions of there being no such commodities in Canada. 
I wake in the dead of night in a cold perspiration, surrounded by 
imaginary barbers, all denying the existence or possibility of 

obtaining such articles. If had a flaxen head, I would certainly 

have it shaved and get a wig and eyebrows out of him, for a small 
pecuniary compensation. 

By the by, if you could only have seen the man at Harrisburg, 
crushing a friendly Quaker in the parlor door ! It was the greatest 
sight I ever saw. I had told him not to admit anybody whatever, 
forgetting that I had previously given this honest Quaker a special 
invitation to come. The Quaker would not be denied, and H. was 
stanch. When I came upon them, the Quaker was black in the 
face, and H. was administering the final squeeze. The Quaker was 
still rubbing his waistcoat with an expression of acute inward 



DICKENS. 135 

suffering, when I left the town. I have been looking for his death. 
in the newspapers almost daily. 

Do you know one General Gr. ? He is a weazen-faced warrior, 
and in his dotage. I had him for a fellow-passenger on board a 
steamboat. I had also a statistical colonel with me, outside the 
coach from Cincinnati to Columbus. A New England poet buzzed 
about me on the Ohio, like a gigantic bee. A mesmeric doctor, of 
an impossibly great age, gave me pamphlets at Louisville. I have 
suffered much, very much. 

If I could get beyond New York to see anybody, it would be 
(as you know) to see you. But I do not expect to reach the 
" Carlton " until the last day of May, and then we are going with 
the Coldens somewhere on the banks of the North River for a 
couple of days. So you see we shall not have much leisure for our 
voyaging preparations. 

You and Dr. Howe (to whom my love) must come to New 
York. On the 6th of June, you must engage yourselves to dine 
with us at the " Carlton " ; and if we don't make a merry evening 
of it, the fault shall not be in us. 

Mrs. Dickens unites with me in best regards to Mrs. Felton and 
your little daughter, and I am always, my dear Felton, 
Affectionately your friend, 

Charles Dickens. 

P. S. I saw a good deal of Walker at Cincinnati. I like him 
very much. We took to him mightily at first, because he resem- 
bled you in face and figure, we thought. You will be glad to hear 
that our news from home is cheering from first to last, all well, 
happy, and loving. My friend Forster says in his last letter that he 
" wants to know you," and looks forward to Longfellow. 

Wlien Dickens arrived in Montreal he had, it seems, a 
busy time of it, and I have often heard of his capital act- 
ing in private theatricals while in that city. 

MoNTEEAl, Saturday, 21st May, 1842. 

My dear Felton: I was delighted to receive your letter yes- 
terday, and was well pleased with its contents. I anticipated 
objection to Carlyle's letter. I called particular attention to it for 
three reasons. Firstly, because he boldly said what all the others 
think, and therefore deserved to be manfully supported. Secondly, 
because it is my deliberate opinion that I have been assailed on this 
subject in a manner in which no man with any pretensions to publio 



136 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

respect or with the remotest right to express an opinion on a 
subject of universal literary interest would be assailed in any other 
country 

I really cannot sufficiently thank you, dear Felton, for your warm 
and hearty interest in these proceedings. But it would be idle to 
pursue that theme, so let it pass. 

The wig and whiskers are in a state of the highest preservation. 
The play comes off next Wednesday night, the 25th. What would 
I give to see you in the front row of the centre box, your spectacles 
gleaming not unlike those of my dear friend Pickwick, your face 
radiant with as broad a grin as a staid professor may indulge in, 
and your very coat, waistcoat, and shoulders expressive of what we 
should take together when the performance was over ! I would 
give something (not so much, but still a good round sum) if you 
could only stumble into that very dark and dusty theatre in the 
daytime (at any minute between twelve and three), and see me 
with my coat off, the stage manager and universal director, urging 
impracticable ladies and impossible gentlemen on to the very con- 
fines of insanity, shouting and driving about, in my own person, to 
an extent which would justify any philanthropic stranger in clap- 
ping me into a strait-waistcoat without further inquiry, endeav- 
oring to goad H. into some dim and faint understanding of a 
prompter's duties, and struggling in such a vortex of noise, dirt, 
bustle, confusion, and inextricable entanglement of speech and 
action as you would grow giddy in contemplating. We perform A 
Roland for an Oliver, A good Night's Eest, and Deaf as a Post. 
This kind of voluntary hard labor used to be my great delight. 
Th-Q furor has come strong upon me again, and I begin to be once 
more of opinion that nature intended me for the lessee of a national 
theatre, and that pen, ink, and paper have spoiled a manager. 

0, how I look forward across that rolling water to home and its 
small tenantry ! How I busy myself in thinking how my books 
look, and where the tables are, and in what positions the chairs 
stand relatively to the other furniture; and whether we shall get 
there in the night, or in the morning, or in the afternoon; and 
whether we shall be able to surprise them, or whether they will be 
too sharply looking out for us ; and what our pets will say ; and 
how they '11 look , and who will be the first to come and shake 
hands, and so forth ! If I could but tell you how I have set my 
heart on rushing into Forster's study (lie is my great friend, and 
writes at the bottom of aU his letters, " My love to Felton "), and 
into Maclise's painting-room, and into Macready's managerial ditto, 



DICKENS. 137 

without a moment's warning, and how I picture every Httle trait 
and circumstance of our arrival to myself, down to the very color of 
the bow on the cook's cap, you would almost think I had changed 
places with my eldest son, and was still in pantaloons of the 
thinnest texture. I left all these things — God only knows what 
a love I have for them — as coolly and calmly as any animated 
cucumber ; but when I come upon them again I shall have lost all 
power of self-restraint, and shall as certainly make a fool of myself 
(in the popular meaning of that expression) as ever Grimaldi did in 
his way, or George III. in his. 

And not the less so, dear Felton, for having found some warm 
hearts, and left some instalments of earnest and sincere affection, 
behind me on this continent. And whenever I turn my mental 
telescope hitherward, trust me that one of the first figures it will 
descry will wear spectacles so hke yours that the maker could n't 
tell the difference, and shall address a Greek class in such an exact 
imitation of your voice, that the very students hearing it should 
cry, " That 's he I Three cheers. Hoo-ray-ay-ay-ay-ay 1 " 

About those joints of yours, I think you are mistaken. They 
can't be stiflf. At the worst they merely want the air of New 
York, which, being impregnated with the flavor of last year'a 
oysters, has a surprising efiect in rendering the human frame 
«upple and flexible in all cases of rust. 

A terrible idea occurred to me as I wrote those words. The 
oyster-cellars, — what do they do when oysters are not in season ? 
Is pickled salmon vended there ? Do they sell crabs, slirimps, 
W-inkles, herrings ? The oyster-openers, — what do they do ? Do 
they commit suicide in despair, or wrench open tight drawers and 
cupboards and hermetically sealed bottles for practice ? Perhaps 
they are dentists out of the oyster season. Who knows ? 
Affectionately yours, 

Charles Dickens. 

Dickens always greatly rejoiced in the theatre; and, 
having seen him act with the Amateur Company of the 
Guild of Literature and Art, I can well imagine the de- 
light his impersonations in Montreal must have occa- 
sioned. I have seen him play Sir Charles Coldstream, in 
the comedy of Used Up, with such perfection that all 
other performers in the same part have seemed dull by 
comparison. Even Matthews, superb artist as he is, could 



138 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

not rival Dickens in the character of Sir Charles. Once 
I saw Dickens, Mark Lemon, and Wilkie Collins on the 
stage together. The play was called Mrs. Nightingale's 
Diary (a farce in one act, the joint production of Dickens 
and Mark Lemon), and Dickens played six characters in 
the piece. Never have I seen such wonderful changes of 
face and form as he gave us that night. He was alter- 
nately a rattling lawyer of the Middle Temple, a boots, 
an eccentric pedestrian and cold-water drinker, a deaf 
sexton, an invalid captain, and an old woman. What fun 
it was, to be sure, and how we roared over the perform- 
ance ! Here is the playbill which I held in my hand 
nineteen years ago, while the great writer was proving 
himself to be as pre-eminent an actor as he was an 
author. One can see by reading the biU that Dickens 
was manager of the company, and that it was under his 
direction that the plays were produced. Observe the 
clear evidence of his hand in the very wording of the 
bill: — 

" On Wednesday evening, September 1, 1852. 

"THE AMATEUR COMPANY 

OF THE 

GUILD OF LITERATURE AND ART; 

To encourage Life Assurance and other provident habits among 
Authors and Artists; to render such assistance to both as shall 
never compromise their independence ; and to found a new Institu- 
tion vehere honorable rest from arduous labors shall still be asso- 
ciated with the discharge of congenial duties ; 

" Will have the honor of presenting," etc., etc., 

But let us go on with the letters. Here is the first one 
to his friend after Dickens arrived home again in Eng- 
land. It is delightful, through and through. 

London, 1 Devonshire Tebbace, York Gate, Regent's Pakk, 
Sunday, July 31,1842. 
My dear Felton : Of all the monstrous and incalculable amount 
of occupation that ever beset one unfortunate man, mine has beea 



DICKENS. 139 

the most stupendous sinc^J I came home. The dinners I have had 
to eat, the places I have had to go to, the letters I have had to 
answer, the sea of business and of pleasure in which I have been 

plunged, not even the genius of an or the pen of a could 

describe. 

Wherefore I indite a monstrously short and wildly uninteresting 
epistle to the American Dando ; but perhaps you don't know who 
Dando was. He was an oyster-eater, my dear Felton. He used to 
go into oyster-shops, without a farthing of money, and stand at the 
counter eating natives, until the man who opened them grew pale, 
cast down his knife, staggered backward, struck his white forehead 
with his open hand, and cried, " You are Dando! ! 1 " He has been 
known to eat twenty dozen at one sitting, and would have eaten 
forty, if the truth had not flashed upon tlie shopkeeper. For these 
offences he was constantly committed to the House of Correction. 
During his last imprisonment he was taken ill, got worse and worse, 
and at last began knocking violent double-knocks at Death's door. 
The doctor stood beside his bed, with his fingers on his pulse. " He 
is going," says the doctor. " I see it in his eye. There is only one 
thing that would keep life in him for another hour, and that is — 
oysters." They were immediately brought. Dando swallowed 
eight, and feebly took a ninth. He held it in his mouth and looked 
round the bed strangely. " Not a bad one, is it ? " says the doctor. 
The patient shook his head, rubbed his trembling hand upon his 
stomach, bolted the oyster, and fell back — dead. They buried him 
in the prison yard, and paved his grave with oyster-shells. 

We are all well and hearty, and have already begun to wonder 
what time next year you and Mrs. Felton and Dr. Howe will come 
across the briny sea together. To-morrow we go to the seaside for 
two months. I am looking out for news of Longfellow, and shall 
be delighted when I know that he is on his way to London and this 
house. 

I am bent upon striking at the piratical newspapers with the 
sharpest edge I can put upon my small axe, and hope in the next 
session of Parliament to stop their entrance into Canada. For the 
first time within the memory of man, the professors of English 
Hterature seem disposed to act together on this question. It is a 
good thing to aggravate a scoundrel, if one can do nothing else, 
and I think we can make them smart a little in this way 

I wish you had been at G-reenwich the other day, where a party 
of friends gave me a private dinner; public ones I have refused. 
C. was perfectly wild at the reunion, and, after singing all manner 



140 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

of marine songs, wound up the entertainment by coming home (six 
miles) in a little open phaeton of mine, on his head, to the mingled 
delight and indignation of the metropolitan police. We were very 
jovial indeed ; and I assure you that I drank your health with fear- 
ful vigor and energy. 

On board that ship coming home I established a club, called the 
United Vagabonds, to the large amusement of the rest of the pas- 
sengers. This holy brotherhood committed all kinds of absurdities, 
and dined always, with a variety of solemn forms, at one end of the 
table, below the mast, away from all the rest. The captain being ill 
when we were three or four days out, I produced my medicine- 
chest and recovered him. We had a few more sick men after that, 
and I went round "the wards" every day in great state, accom- 
panied by two Vagabonds, habited as Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer, 
bearing enormous rolls of plaster and huge pairs of scissors. We 
were really very merry all the way, breakfasted in one party at 

Liverpool, shook hands, and parted most cordially 

Affectionately 

Your faithful friend, 

CD. 

P. S. I have looked over my journal, and have decided to pro- 
duce my American trip in two volumes. I hava written about half 
the first since I came home, and hope to be out in October. This is 
" exclusive news," to be communicated to any friends to whom you 
may like to intrust it, my dear F. 

Wliat a capital epistolary pen Dickens held ! He seems 
never to have written the shortest note without something 
piquant in it ; and when he attempted a letter, he always 
made it entertaining from sheer force of habit. 

When I think of this man, and all the lasting good and 
abounding pleasure he has brought into the world, I won- 
der at the superstition that dares to arraign him. A sound 
philosopher once said : " He that thinks any innocent pas- 
time foolish has either to grow wiser, or is past the ability 
to do so " ; and I have always counted it an impudent 
fiction that playfulness is inconsistent with greatness. 
Many men and women have died of Dignity, but the 
disease which sent them to the tomb was not contracted 



DICKENS. 141 

from Charles Dickens. Not long ago, I met in the street 
a bleak old character, fuU of dogmatism, egotism, and 
rheumatism, who complained that Dickens had " too much 
exuberant sociality" in his books for him, and he won- 
dered how any one could get through Pickwick. My 
solemn friend evidently preferred the dropping-down- 
deadness of manner, which he had been accustomed to 
find in Hervey's " Meditations," and other kindred authors, 
where it always seems to be urged that life would be 
endurable but for its pleasures. A person once com- 
mended to my acquaintance an individual whom he de- 
scribed as "a fine, pompous, gentlemanly man," and I 
thought it prudent, under the circumstances, to decline 
the proffered introduction. 

But I will proceed with those outbursts of bright- 
heartedness vouchsafed to us in Dickens's letters. To 
me these epistles are good as fresh " Uncommercials," or 
xmpublished "Sketches by Boz." 

1 Devonshire Terrace, York Gate, Regent's Park, Londow, 
iBt September, 1842. 

My dear Felton : Of course that letter in the papers was as foul 

a forgery as ever felon swung for I have not contradicted it 

publicly, nor shall I. When I tilt at such wringings out of the 
dirtiest mortality, I shall be another man — indeed, almost the crea- 
ture they would make me. 

I gave your message to Forster, who sends a despatch-box full of 
kind remembrances in return. He is in a great state of delight 
with the first volume of my American book (which I have just 
finished), and swears loudly by it. It is True, and Honorable I 
know, and I shall hope to send it you, complete, by the first steamer 
in November. 

Your description of the porter and the carpet-bags prepares me 
for a first-rate facetious novel, brimful of the richest humor, on 
which I have no doubt you are engaged. What is it called ? Some- 
times I imagine the title-page thus : — 



142 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

OYSTERS 

IN 

EVERT STYLE 

OR 

OPENINGS 

OF 

LIFE 

BY 

YOUNG DANDO. 

As to the man putting the luggage on his head, as a sort of sign, 
adopt it from this hour. 

I date this from London, where I have come, as a good, profligate, 
graceless bachelor, for a day or two ; leaving my wife and babbies 

at the seaside Heavens ! if you were but here at thia 

minute ! A piece of salmon and a steak are cooking in the kitchen ; 
it 's a very wet day, and I have had a fire lighted ; the wine sparkle? 
on a side-table ; the room looks the more snug from being the only 
wndismantled one in the house ; plates are warming for Forster and 
Maclise, whose knock I am momentarily expecting ; that groom I 
told you of, who never comes into the house, except when we are 
all out of town, is walking about in his shirt-sleeves without the 
smallest consciousness of impropriety ; a great mound of proofs are 
waiting to be read aloud, after dinner. With what a shout I would 
clap you down into the easiest chair, my genial Felton, if you <Jould 
but appear, and order you a pair of slippers instantly I 

Since I have written this, the aforesaid groom — a very small 
man (as the fashion is) with fiery-red hair (as the fashion is not) — 
has looked very hard at me and fluttered about me at the same 
time, like a giant butterfly. After a pause, he says, in a Sam Wel- 
lerish kind of way : " I vent to the club this mornin', sir. There 
vorn't no letters, sir." " Very good. Topping." " How 's missis, 
sir ? " " Pretty well. Topping." " Glad to hear it, sir. My missis 
ain't wery well, sir." "No!" "No, sir, she's a goin', sir, to have 
a hincrease wery soon, and it makes her rather nervous, sir; and 
ven a young voman gets at all down at sich a time, sir, she goes 
down wery deep, sir." To this sentiment I reply affirmatively, and 
then he adds, as he stirs the fire (as if he were thinking out loudj^ 
" Wot a mystery it is I Wot a go is natur' I " With which scrap 
of philosophy, he gradually gets nearer to the door, and so fades 
out of the room. 



DICKENS. 143 

This same man asked me one day, soon after I came home, what 
Sir John Wilson was. This is a friend of mine, who took our house 
and servants, and everything as it stood, during our absence in 
America. I told him an officer. " A wot, sir ? " " An officer." 
And then, for fear he should think I meant a police-officer, I added, 
" An officer in the army." " I beg your pardon, sir," he said, 
touching his hat, " but the club as I always drove him to wos the 
United Servants." 

The real name of this club is the United Service, but I have no 
doubt he thought it was a high-life-below-stairs kind of resort, and 
that tbis gentleman was a retired butler or superannuated footman. 

There 's the knock, and the G-reat Western sails, or steams rather, 
to-morrow. Write soon again, dear Felton, and ever believe 
me, .... 

Your affectionate friend, 

Charles Dickens. 

P. S. All good angels prosper Dr. Howe. He, at least, will not 
like me the less, I hope, for what I shall say of Laura. 

London, 1 Devonshire Terrace, York Gate, Regent's Fare, 
31st December, 1842. 

My dear Felton : Many and many happy New Years to you 
and yours ! As many happy children as may be quite convenient 
(no more) ! and as many happy meetings between them and our 
children, and between you and us, as the kind fates in their utmost 
kindness shall favorably decree ! 

The American book (to begin with that) has been a most com- 
plete and thorough-going success. Four large editions have now 
been sold and paid for, and it has won golden opinions from all 

sorts of men, except our friend in F , who is a miserable crea» 

ture ; a disappointed man in great poverty, to whom I have ever 
been most kind and considerate (I need scarcely say that) ; and 
another friend in B , no less a person than an illustrious gentle- 
man named , who wrote a story called . They have done 

no harm, and have fallen short of their mark, which, of course, was 
to annoy me. Now I am perfectly free from any diseased curiosity 
in such respects, and whenever I hear of a notice of this kind, I never 
read it ; whereby I always conceive (don't you ?) that I get the vic- 
tory. With regard to your slave-owners, they may cry, till they are 
as black in the face as their own slaves, that Dickens lies. Dickens 
does not write for their satisfaction, and Dickens will not explain for 
their comfort Dickens has the name and date of every newspaper 



144 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

in which every one of those advertisements appeared, as they know 
perfectly well ; but Dickens does not choose to give them, and will 
not at any time between this and the day of judgment 

I have been hard at work on my new book, of which the first 
number has just appeared. The Paul Joneses who pursue happiness 
and profit at other men's cost will no doubt enable you to read it, 
almost as soon as you receive this. I hope you will like it. And I 
particularly commend, my dear Felton, one Mr. Pecksniff and his 
daughters to your tender regards. I have a kind of liking for them 
myself. 

Blessed star of morning, such a trip as we had into Cornwall, just 
after Longfellow went away I The " we " means Forster, Maclise, 
Stanfield (the renowned marine painter), and the Inimitable Boz. 
We went down into Devonshire by the railroad, and there we hired 
an open carriage from an innkeeper, patriotic in all Pickwick matters, 
and went on with post horses. Sometimes we travelled all night, 
sometimes all day, sometimes both. I kept the joint-stock purse, 
ordered all the dinners, paid all the turnpikes, conducted facetious 
conversations with the post-boys, and regulated the pace at which 
we travelled. Stanfield (an old sailor) consulted an enormous map 
on all disputed points of wayfaring ; and referred, moreover, to a 
pocket-compass and other scientific instruments. The luggage was 
in Forster's department ; and Machse, having nothing particular to 
do, sang songs. Heavens ! If you could have seen the necks of 
bottles — distracting in their immense varieties of shape — peering 
out of the carriage pockets ! If you could have witnessed the deep 
devotion of the post-boys, the wild attachment of the hostlers, the 
maniac glee of the waiters. If you could have followed us into the 
earthy old churches we visited, and into the strange caverns on the 
gloomy sea-shore, and down into the depths of mines, and up to 
the tops of giddy heights where the unspeakably green water was 
roaring, I don't know how many hundred feet below ! If vou could 
have seen but one gleam of the bright fires by which we sat in the 
big rooms of ancient inns at night, until long after the smaii hours 
had come and gone, or smelt but one steam of the hot punch (not 
white, dear Felton, like that amazing compound I sent you a taste of, 
but a rich, genial, glowing brown) which came in every evening in 
a huge broad china bowl ! I never laughed in my life as I did on 
this journey. It would have done you good to hear me. I was 
choking and gasping and bursting the buckle off the back of my 
stock, all the way. And Stanfield (who is very much of your figure 
and temperament, but fifteen years older) got into such apoplectic 



/ 



/ 



DICKENS. 145 

entanglements that we were often obliged to beat him on the back 
with portmanteaus before we could recover him. Seriously, I do 
beheve there never was such a trip. And they made such sketches, 
those two men, in the most romantic of our halting-places, that you 
would have SAVorn we had the Spirit of Beauty with us, as well as 
the Spirit of Fun. But stop till you come to England, — I say no 
more. 

The actuary of the national debt could n't calculate the number 
of children who are coming here on Twelfth Night, in honor of 
Charley's birthday, for which occasion I have provided a magic lan- 
tern and divers other tremendous engines of that nature. But the 
best of it is that Forster and I have purchased between us the entire 
stock in trade of a conjurer, the practice and display whereof is in- 
trusted to me. And my dear eyes, Felton, if you could see me 
conjuring the company's watches into impossible tea-caddies, and 
causing pieces of money to fly, and burning pocket-handkerchiefs 
without hurting 'em, and practising in my own room, without any- 
body to admire, you would never forget it aa long as you hve. In 
those tricks which require a confederate, I am assisted (by reason 
of his imperturbable good-humor) by Stanfield, who always does 
his part exactly the wrong way, to the unspeakable delight of all 
beholders. We come out on a small scale, to-night, at Forster's, 
where we see the old year out and the new one in. Particulars of 
shall be forwarded in my next. 

I have quite made up my inind that F really believes he does 

know you personally, and has all his life. He talks to me about 
you with such gravity that I am afraid to grin, and feel it necessary 
to look quite serious. Sometimes he tells me things about you, 
does n't ask me, you know, so that I am occasionally perplexed 
beyond all telling, and begin to think it was he, and not I, who 
went to America. It 's the queerest thing in the world. 

The book I was to have given Longfellow for you is not worth 
sending by itself, being only a Bamaby. But I will look up some 
manuscript for you (I think I have that of the American Notes 
complete), and will try to make the parcel better worth its long 
conveyance. With regard to Maclise's pictures, you certainly are 
quite right in your impression of them; but he is "such a discur- 
sive devil" (as he says about himself), and flies off at such odd 
tangents, that I feel it difl&cult to convey to you any general notion 
of his purpose. I wiU try to do so when I write again. I want 

very much to know about and that charming girl G-ive 

me fuU particulars. Will you remember me cordially to Sumner, 
7 J 



146 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and say I thank him for his welcome letter ? The like to HiUard, 
with many regards to himself and his wife, with whom I had one 
night a little conversation which I shall not readily forget. The 
like to Washington Allston, and all friends who care for me and 

have outlived my book Always, my dear Felton, 

With true regard and aflfection, yours, 

Charles Dickeks. 

Here is a letter that seems to me something tremen- 
dous in its fun and pathos : — 

1 Devonshire Tebkacb, York Gate, Regent's Park, London, 
2d March, 1843. 

My dear Felton : I don't know where to begin, but plunge head- 
long with a terrible splash into this letter, on the chance of turning 
up somewhere. 

Hurrah ! Up like a cork again, with the " North American Re- 
view " in my hand. Like you, my dear , and I can say no 

more in praise of it, though I go on to the end of the sheet. You 
cannot think how much notice it has attracted here. Brougham 
called the other day, with the number (thinking I might not have 
seen it), and I being out at the time, he left a note, speaking of it, 
and of the writer, in terms that warmed my heart. Lord Ashbur- 
ton (one of whose people wrote a notice in the " Edinburgh," 
which they have since publicly contradicted) also wrote to me about 
it in just the same strain. And many others have done the hke. 

I am in great health and spirits and powdering away at Chuz^ 
zlewit, with all manner of facetiousness rising up before me as 

I go on. As to news, I have really none, saving that (who 

never took any exercise in his life) has been laid up with rheuma^ 
tism for weeks past, but is now, I hope, getting better. My little 
captain, as I call him, — he who took me out, I mean, and with 
whom I had that adventure of the cork soles, — has been in London 
too, and seeing all the lions under my escort. Good heavens ! I 
wish you could have seen certain other mahogany-faced men (also 
captains) who used to call here for him in the morning, and bear 
him oflf to docks and rivers and aU sorts of queer places, whence he 
always returned late at night, with rum-and-water tear-drops in his 
eyes, and a complication of punchy smells in his mouth 1 He was 
better than a comedy to us, having marvellous ways of tying hia 
pocket-handkerchief round his neck at dinner-time in a kind of 
jolly embarrassment, and then forgetting what he had done with it; 
also of singing songs to wrong tunes, and calling land objects by 



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DICKENS. 147 

sea names, and never knowing what o'clock it was, but taking mid- 
night for seven in the evening ; with many other sailor oddities, all 
fiill of honesty, manliness, and good temper. We took him to 
Drury Lane Theatre to see Much Ado About Nothing. But I 
never could find out what he meant by turning round, after he had 
watched the first two scenes with great attention, and inquiring 
" whether it was a Pohsh piece.". . . . 

On the 4th of April I am going to preside at a public dinner for 
the benefit of the printers ; and if you were a guest at that table, 
would n't I smite you on the shoulder, harder than ever I rapped 
the well-beloved back of Washington Irving at the City Hotel in 
New York I 

You were asking me — I love to say asking, as if we could talk 
together — about Maclise. He is such a discursive feUow, and so 
eccentric in his might, that on a mental review of his pictures I can 
hardly tell you of them as leading to any one strong purpose. But 
the annual Exhibition of the Royal Academy comes off in May, and 
then I will endeavor to give you some notion of him. He is a tre- 
mendous creature, and might do anything. But, like all tremendous 
creatures, he takes his own way, and flies oflf at unexpected breaches 
in the conventional wall 

You know H 's Book, I daresay. Ah ! I saw a scene of 

mingled comicality and seriousness at his funeral some weeks ago, 

which has choked me at dinner-time ever since. C and I went 

as mourners ; and as he lived, poor fellow, five miles out of town, I 

drove C down. It was such a day as I hope, for the credit of 

nature, is seldom seen in any parts but these, — muddy, foggy, wet, 
dark, cold, and unutterably wretched in every possible respect. Now, 

C has enormous whiskers, which straggle all down his throat in 

such weather, and stick out in fi-ont of him, like a partially unrav- 
elled bird's-nest ; so that he looks queer enough at the best, but when 
he is very wet, and in a state between jolUty (he is always very 
jolly with me) and the deepest gravity (going to a funeral, you 
know), it is utterly impossible to resist him ; especially as he makes 
the strangest remarks the mind of man can conceive, without any 
intention of being funny, but rather meaning to be philosophical. I 
really cried with an irresistible sense of his comicality all the way ; 
but when he was dressed out in a black cloak and a very long black 
hat-band by an undertaker (who, as he whispered me with tears in 
his eyes — for he had known H many years — was " a char- 
acter, and he would like to sketch him "), I thought I should have 
been obliged to go away. However, we went into a httle parlor 



148 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

where the funeral party was, and Grod knows it was miserable 
enough, for the widow and children were crying bitterly in one cor- 
ner, and the other mourners — mere people of ceremony, who cared 
no more for the dead man than the hearse did — were talking quite 
coolly and carelessly together in another ; and the contrast was aa 
painful and distressing as anything I ever saw. There was an inde- 
pendent clergyman present, with his bands on and a Bible under his 

arm, who, as soon as we were seated, addressed thus, in a loud, 

emphatic voice : " Mr. C , have you seen a paragraph respecting 

our departed friend, which has gone the round of the morning pa- 
pers ? " " Yes, sir," says C , " I have," looking very hard at me 

the while, for he had told me with some pride coming down that it 
was his composition. '' Oh ! " said the clergyman. " Then you 

will agree with me, Mr. C , that it is not only an insult to me, 

who am the servant of the Almighty, but an insult to the Almighty, 

whose servant I am." " How is that, sir ? " said C . " It is 

stated, Mr. C , in that paragraph," says the minister, "that when 

Mr. H failed in business as a bookseller, he was persuaded by 

me to try the pulpit, which is false, incorrect, unchristian, in a man- 
ner blasphemous, and in all respects contemptible. Let us pray." 
With which, my dear Felton, and in the same breath, I give you my 
word, he knelt down, as we all did, and began a very miserable 
jumble of an extemporary prayer. I was really penetrated with 

sorrow for the family, but when C (upon his knees, and sobbing 

for the loss of an old friend) whispered me, " that if that was n't a 
clergyman, and it was n't a funeral, he 'd have punched his head," I 

felt as if nothing but convulsions could possibly reUeve me 

Faithfully always, my dear Felton, 

C. D. 

"Was there ever such a genial, jovial creature as this 
master of humor ! When we read his friendly epistles, 
we cannot help wishing he had written letters only, as 
when we read his novels we grudge the time he employed 
on anything else. 

Broadstairs, Kent, 1st September, 1843. 
Mr DEAR Felton : If I thought it in the nature of things that 
you and I could ever agree on paper, touching a certain Chuzzle- 

witian question whereupon F tells me you have remarks to 

make, I should immediately walk into the same, tooth and nail. But 
as I don't, I won't. Contenting myself with this prediction, that 



DICKENS. 149 

one of these years and days, you will write or say to me, " My dear 
Dickens, you were right, though rough, and did a world of good, 
though you got most thoroughly hated for it." To which I shall 
reply, " My dear Felton, I looked a long way off and not immedi- 
ately under my nose." . . . • At which sentiment you will laugh, 
and I shall laugh ; and then (for I foresee this will all happen in 
my land) we shall call for another pot of porter and two or three 
dozen of oysters. 

Now don't you in your own heart and soul quarrel with me for 
this long silence? Not half so much as I quarrel with myself, I 
know ; but if you could read half the letters I write to you in ima- 
gination, you would swear by me for the best of correspondents. 
The truth is, that when I have done my morning's work, down goes 
my pen, and from that minute I feel it a positive impossibility to 
take it up again, until imaginary butchers and bakers wave me 
to my desk. I walk about brimful of letters, facetious descrip- 
tions, touching morsels, and pathetic friendships, but can't for the 
soul of me uncork myself The post-office is my rock ahead. My 
average number of letters that must be written every day is, at the 
least, a dozen. And you could no more know what I was writing 
to you spiritually, from the perusal of the bodily thirteenth, than you 
could tell from my hat what was going on in my head, or could read 
my heart on the surface of my flannel waistcoat. 

This is a little fishing-place ; intensely quiet ; built on a cliff 
whereon — in the centre of a tiny semicircular bay — our house 
stands ; the sea rolling and dashing under the windows. Seven miles 
out are the Groodwin Sands, (you 've heard of the Goodwin Sands ?) 
whence floating Hghts perpetually wink after dark, as if they were 
carrying on intrigues with the servants. Also there is a big light- 
house called the North Foreland on a hill behind the village, a severe 
parsonic light, which reproves the young and giddy floaters, and 
stares grimly out upon the sea. Under the cliff are rare good sands, 
where all the children assemble every morning and throw up impos- 
sible fortifications, which the sea throws down again at high water. 
Old gentlemen and ancient ladies flirt after their own manner in two 
reading-rooms and on a great many scattered seats in the open air. 
Other old gentlemen look all day through telescopes and never see 
anything. In a bay-window in a one pair sits from nine o'clock to 
one a gentleman with rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writea 
and grins as if he thought he were very funny indeed. His name 
is Boz. At one he disappears, and presently emerges from a bath- 
ing-machine, and may be seen — a kind of salmon-colored porpoise 



I50 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

— splashing about in the ocean. After that he may be seen in 
another bay-window on the ground-floor, eating a strong lunch; 
after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back in the 
sand reading a book. Nobody bothers him unless they know he is 
disposed to be talked to; and I am told he is very comfortable 
indeed. He 's as brown as a berry, and they do say is a small for- 
tune to the innkeeper who sells beer and cold punch. But this is 
mere rumor. Sometimes he goes up to London (eighty miles, or so, 
away), and then I 'm told there is a sound in Lincoln Inn Fields at 
night, as of men laughing, together with a clinking of knives and 
forks and wine-glasses. 

I never shall have been so near you since we parted aboard the 
G-eorge Washington as next Tuesday, Forster, Maclise, and I, and 
perhaps Stanfield, are then going aboard the Cunard steamer at 
Liverpool, to bid Macready good by, and bring his wife away. It 
will be a very hard parting. You will see and know him of course. 
We gave him a splendid dinner last Saturday at Richmond, whereat 
I presided with my accustomed grace. He is one of the noblest 
fellows in the world, and I would give a great deal that you and 
I should sit beside each other to see him play Virginius, Lear, or 
Werner, which I take to be, every way, the greatest piece of exquisite 
perfection that his lofty art is capable of attaining. His Macbeth, espe- 
cially the last act, is a tremendous reality ; but so indeed is almost 
everything he does. You recollect, perhaps, that he was the guardian 
of our children while we were away. I love him dearly 

You asked me, long ago, about Maclise. He is such a wayward 
fellow in his subjects, that it would be next to impossible to write 
such an article as you were thinking of about him. I wish you 
could form an idea of his genius. One of these days a book wiU 
come out, " Moore's Irish Melodies," entirely illustrated by him, on 
every page. When it comes, I '11 send it to you. You will have 
some notion of him then. He is in great favor with the queen, and 
paints secret pictures for her to put upon her husband's table on the 
morning of his birthday, and the like. But if he has a care, he 
will leave his mark on more enduring things than palace walls. 

And so L is married. I remember her well, and could draw 

her portrait, in words, to the life. A very beautiftil and gentle 
creature, and a proper love for a poet. My cordial remembrances 
and congratulations. Do they live in the house where we break- 
fasted? .... 

I very often dream I am in America again ; but, strange to say, I 
never dream of you. I am always endeavoring to get home in dis- 



DICKENS. 151 

guise, and have a dreary sense of the distance. Apropos of dreams, 
is it not a strange thing if writers of fiction never dream of their 
own creations; recollecting, I suppose, even in their dreams, that 
they have no real existence ? / never dreamed of any of my own 
characters, and I feel it so impossible that I would wager Scott 
never did of his, real as they are. I had a good piece of absurdity 
in my head a night or two ago. I dreamed that somebody was 
dead. I don't know who, but it 's not to the purpose. It was a 
private gentleman, and a particular friend ; and I was greatly over- 
come when the news was broken to me (very dehcately) by a gen- 
tleman in a cocked hat, top boots, and a sheet. Nothing else. 
" Good God I " I said, " is he dead ? " " He is as dead, sir," rejoined 
the gentleman, " as a door-nail. But we must all die, Mr. Dickens ; 
sooner or later, my dear sir." " Ah 1 " I said. " Yes, to be sure. 
Very true. But what did he die of? " The gentleman burst into a 
flood of tears, and said, in a voice broken by emotion : " He chris- 
tened his youngest child, sir, with a toasting-fork." I never in my 
life was so affected as at his having fallen a victim to this complaint. 
It carried a conviction to my mind that he never could have re- 
covered. I knew that it was the most interesting and fatal malady 
in the world ; and I wrung the gentleman's hand in a convulsion 
of respectful admiration, for I felt that this explanation did equal 
honor to his head and heart I 

What do you think of Mrs. Gamp ? And how do you like the- 
undertaker ? I have a fancy that they are in your way. heaven f 
such green woods as I was rambling among down in Yorkshire^ 
when I was getting that done last July ! For days and weeks we 
never saw the sky but through green boughs ; and all day long I 
cantered over such soft moss and turf, that the horse's feet scarcely 
made a sound upon it. We have some friends in that part of the 
country (close to Castle Howard, where Lord Morpeth's father 
dwells in state, in his park indeed), who are the joUiest of the jolly, 
keeping a big old country house, with an ale cellar something larger 
than a reasonable church, and everything like Goldsmith's bear 
dances, " in a concatenation accordingly." Just the place for you, 
Felton ! We performed some madnesses there in the way of forfeits, 
picnics, rustic games, inspections of ancient monasteries at midnight, 
when the moon was shining, that would have gone to your heart, 
and, as Mr. WeUer says, " come out on the other side.". . . . 

Write soon, my dear Felton ; and if I write to you less often than 
I would, believe that my affectionate heart is with you always. 
Loves and regards to all friends, from yours ever and ever, 

Charles Dickens. 



152 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

These letters grow better and better as we get on. 
Ah me ! and to think we shall have no more from that 
delightful pen ! 

Detosshire Tbbrack, London, January 2, 1844. 

Mt very dear Felton : You are a prophet, and had best retire 
from business straightway. Yesterday morning, New Year's day, 
when I walked into my httle workroom after breakfast, and was 
looking out of window at the snow in the garden, — not seeing it 
particularly well in consequence of some staggering suggestions of 
last night, whereby I was beset, — the postman came to the door 
with a knock, for which I denounced him from my heart. Seeing 
your hand upon the cover of a letter which he brought, I immediately 
blessed him, presented him with a glass of whiskey, inquired after 
his family (they are all well), and opened the despatch with a moist 
and oystery twinkle in my eye. And on the very day from which 
the new year dates, I read your New Year congratulations as punc- 
tually as if you lived in the next house. Why don't you ? 

Now, if instantly on the receipt of this you will send a free and 
independent citizen down to the Cunard wharf at Boston, you wiU 
find that Captain Hewett, of the Britannia steamship (my ship), has 
a small parcel for Professor Felton of Cambridge ; and in that parcel 
you will find a Christmas Carol in prose ; being a short story of 
Christmas by Charles Dickens. Over which Christmas Carol Charles 
Dickens wept and laughed and wept again, and excited himself in a 
most extraordinary manner in the composition ; and thinking where- 
of he walked about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty 

miles, many a night when all the sober folks had gone to bed 

Its success is most prodigious. And by every post all manner of 
strangers write all manner of letters to him about their homes and 
hearths, and how this same Carol is read aloud there, and kept on a 
little shelf by itself Indeed, it is the greatest success, as I am told, 
that this rufiian and rascal has ever achieved. 

Forster is out again ; and if he don't go in again, after the manner 
in which we have been keeping Christmas, he must be very strong 
indeed. Such dinings, such dancings, such conjurings, such blind- 
man's-buflSngs, such theatre-goings, such kissings-out of old years 
and kissings-in of new ones, never took place in these parts before. 
To keep the Chuzzlewit going, and do this little book, the Carol, in 
the odd times between two parts of it, was, as you may suppose, 
pretty tight work. But when it was done I broke out like a mad- 
man. And if you could have seen me at a children's party at Mac- 



DICKENS.. 153 

ready's the other night, going down a country danoe with Mrs. M., 
you would have thought I was a country gentleman of independent 
property, residing on a tiptop farm, with the wind blowing straight 
in my face every day 

Tour friend, Mr. P , dined with us one day (I don't know 

whether I told you this before), and pleased us very much. Mr. 

C has dined here once, and spent an evening here, I have not 

seen him lately, though he has called twice or thrice ; for K 

being unwell and I busy, we have not been visible at our accus- 
tomed seasons. I wonder whether H has fallen in your way. 

Poor H ! He was a good fellow, and has the most grateful 

heart I ever met with. Our journeyings seem to be a dream now. 
Talking of dreams, strange thoughts of Italy and France, and may- 
be G-ermany, are springing up within me as the Chuzzlewit clears 
off. It 's a secret I have hardly breathed to any one, but I " think" 
of leaving England for a year^ next midsummer, bag and baggage, 
little ones and all, — then coming out with such a story, Felton, all 
at once, no parts, sledge-hammer blow. 

I send you a Manchester paper, as you desire. The report is not 
exactly done, but very well done, notwithstanding. It was a very 
splendid sight, I assure you, and an awftil-looking audience. I am 
going to preside at a similar meeting at Liverpool on the 26th of 
next month, and on my way home I may be obliged to preside at 
another at Birmingham. I will send you papers, if the reports be 
at all like the real thing. 

I wrote to Prescott about his book, with which I was perfectly 
charmed. I think his descriptions masterly, his style brilliant, his 
purpose manly and gallant always. The introductory account of 
Aztec civilization impressed me exactly as it impressed you. From 
beginning to end, the whole history is enchanting and full of genius. 
I only wonder that, having such an opportunity of illustrating the 
doctrine of visible judgments, he never remarks, when Cortes and 
his men tumble the idols down the temple steps and caU upon the 
people to take notice that their gods are powerless to help them- 
selves, that possibly if some intelhgent native had tumbled down 
the image of the Virgin or patron saint after them nothing very re- 
markable might have ensued in consequence. 

Of course you hke Macready. Your name 's Felton. I wish you 
could see him play Lear. It is stupendously terrible. But I sup- 
pose he would be slow to act it with the Boston company. 

Hearty remembrances to Sumner, Longfellow, Prescott, and all 
whom you know I love to remember. Countless happy years to 
7* 



154 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

you and yours, my dear Felton, and some instalment of them, how- 
ever slight, in England, in the loving company of 

The Proscribed One. 

0, breathe not his name. 



Here is a portfolio of Dickens's letters, written to me 
from time to time during the past ten years. As long ago 
as the spring of 1858 I began to press him very hard to 
come to America and give us a course of readings from his 
works. At that time I had never heard him read in pub- 
lic, but the fame of his wonderful performances rendered 
me eager to have my own country share in the enjoyment 
of them. Being in London in the summer of 1859, and 
dining with him one day in his town residence, Tavistock 
House, Tavistock Square, we had much talk in a corner 
of his library about coming to America. I thought him 
over-sensitive with regard to his reception here, and I 
tried to remove any obstructions that might exist in his 
mind at that time against a second visit across the Atlan- 
tic. I followed up our conversation with a note setting 
forth the certainty of his success among his Transatlantic 
friends, and urging him to decide on a visit during the 
year. He replied to me, dating from " Gad's Hill Place, 
Higham by Eochester, Kent." 

"I write to you from my little Kentish country house, on the 
very spot where FalstaflF ran away. 

" I cannot tell you how very much obliged to you I feel for your 
kind suggestion, and for the perfectly frank and unaflfected manner 
in which it is conveyed to me. 

" It touches, I will admit to you frankly, a chord that has several 
times sounded in my breast, since I began my readings. I should 
very much hke to read in America. But the idea is a mere dream 
as yet. Several strong reasons would make the journey difficult to 
me, and — even were they overcome — I would never make it, un- 
less I had great general reason to believe that the American people 
really wanted to hear me. 



DICKENS. ISS 

" Through the whole of this autumn I shall be reading in various 
parts of England, Ireland, and Scotland. I mention this, in refer- 
ence to the closing paragraph of your esteemed favor. 

" Allow me once again to thank you most heartily, and to remain, 
" Grratefiilly and faithfully yours, 

" Charles Dickens." 

Early in the month of July, 1859, I spent a day with 
him in his beautiful country retreat in Kent. He drove 
me about the leafy lanes in his basket wagon, pointing out 
the lovely spots belonging to his friends, and ending with 
a visit to the ruins of Eochester Castle. We climbed up 
the time-worn walls and leaned out of the ivied windows, 
looking into the various apartments below. I remember 
how vividly he reproduced a probable scene in the great 
old banqueting-room, and how graphically he imagined 
the life of ennui and every-day tediousness that went on 
in those lazy old times. I recall his fancy picture of the 
dogs stretched out before the fire, sleeping and snoring with 
their masters. That day he seemed to revel in the past, 
and I stood by, listening almost with awe to his impres- 
sive voice, as he spoke out whole chapters of a romance 
destined never to be written. On our way back to Gad's 
Hill Place, he stopped in the road, I remember, to have a 
crack with a gentleman who he told me was a son of 
Sydney Smith. The only other guest at his table that 
day was Wilkie Collins ; and after dinner we three went 
out and lay down on the grass, while Dickens showed off 
a raven that was hopping about, and told anecdotes of 
the bird and of his many predecessors. We also talked 
about his visiting America, I putting as many spokes as 
possible into that favorite wheel of mine. A day or 
two after I returned to London I received this note from 
him : — 

" . . . . Only to say that I heartily enjoyed our day, and shall 
long remember it. Also that I have been perpetually repeating the 
experience (of a more tremendous sort in the way of ghastly 



156 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

comicality, experience there is none) on the grass, on my back. 
Also, that I have not forgotten Cobbett. Also, that I shall trouble 
you at greater length when the mysterious oracle, of New York, 
pronounces. 

" Wilkie Collins begs me to report that he declines pale horse, 
and all other horse exercise — and all exercise, except eating, drink- 
ing, smoking, and sleeping — in the dog days. 

" With united kind regards, believe me always cordially yours, 

" Charles Dickens." 

An agent had come out from New York with offers to 
induce him to arrange for a speedy visit to America, and 
Dickens was then waiting to see the man who had been 
announced as on his way to him. He was evidently giv- 
ing the subject serious consideration, for on the 20th of 
July he sends me this note : — 

" As I have not yet heard from Mr. of New York, I begin to 

think it likely (or, rather, I begin to think it more likely than I 
thought it before) that he has not backers good and sufficient, and 
that his ' mission ' will go off. It is possible that I may hear from 
him before the month is out, and I shall not make any reading ar- 
rangements until it has come to a close ; but I do not regard it aa 

being very probable that the said will appear satisfactorily, 

either in the flesh or the spirit. 

" Now, considering that it would be August before I could move 
in the matter, that it would be indispensably necessary to choose some 
business connection and have some business arrangements made in 
America, and that I am inclined to think it would not be easy to 
originate and complete all the necessary preparations for beginning 
in October, I want your kind advice on the following points : — 

" 1. Suppose I postponed the idea for a year. 

" 2. Suppose I postponed it until after Christmas. 

" 3. Suppose I sent some trusty person out to America now, to 
negotiate with some sound, responsible, trustworthy man of busi- 
ness in New York, accustomed to public undertakings of such a 
nature; my negotiator being fully empowered to conclude any 
arrangements with him that might appear, on consultation, best. 

" Have you any idea of any such person to whom you could 
recommend me ? Or of any such agent here ? I only want to see 
my way distinctly, and to have it prepared before me, out in the 




^ ayi^/^jTj^i 



DICKENS. 157 

States. Now, I will make no apology for troubling you, because I 
thoroughly rely on your interest and kindness. 

" I am at Gad's Hill, except on Tuesdays and the greater part of 
Wednesdays. 

" With kind regards, very faithfully yours, 

" Charles Dickeks." 

Various notes passed between us after this, during 
my stay in London in 1859. On the 6th of August he 
writes : — 

" I have considered the subject in every way, and have consulted 
with the few friends to whom I ever refer my doubts, and whose 
judgment is in the main excellent. I have (this is between our- 
selves) come to the conclusion that I will not go now. 

" A year hence I may revive the matter, and your presence in 
America will then be a great encouragement and assistance to 
me. I shall see you (at least I count upon doing so) at my house 
in town before you turn your face towards the locked-up house ; 
and we will then, reversing Macbeth, ' proceed further in this 
business.' .... 

" Believe me always (and here I forever renounce ' Mr.,' as hav- 
ing anything whatever to do with our communication, and as being 
a mere preposterous interloper), 

" Faithfully yours, 

'" Charles Dickens." 

Wlien I arrived in Eome, early in 1860, one of the first 
letters I received from London was from him. The pro- 
ject of coming to America was constantly before him, and 
he wrote to me that he should have a great deal to say 
when I came back to England in the spring ; but the plan 
fell through, and he gave up all hope of crossing the water 
again. However, I did not let the matter rest ; and when 
I returned home I did not cease, year after year, to keep 
the subject open in my communications with him. He 
kept a watchful eye on what was going forward in Amer- 
ica, both in literature and politics. During the war, of 
course, both of us gave up our correspondence about the 
readings. He was actively engaged all over Great Britain 



158 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

in giving his marvellous entertainments, and there cer- 
tainly was no occasion for his travelling elsewhere. In 
October, 1862, 1 sent him the proof-sheets of an article, 
that was soon to appear in the Atlantic Monthly, on 
" Blind Tom," and on receipt of it he sent me a letter, 
from which this is an extract : — 

" I have read that affecting paper you have had the kindness to 
send me, vs^ith strong interest and emotion. You may readily sup- 
pose that I have been most glad and ready to avail myself of your 
permission to print it I have placed it in our Number made up to- 
day, which v(rill be pubhshed on the 18th of this month, — well be- 
fore you, — as you desire. 

" Think of reading in America ? Lord bless you, I think of read- 
ing in the deepest depth of the lowest crater in the Moon, on my 
way there ! 

" There is no sun-picture of my Falstaff House as yet ; but it 
shall be done, and you shall have it. It has been much improved 
internally since you saw it 

" I expect Macready at Gad's Hill on Saturday. You know that 
his second wife (an excellent one) presented him lately with a Uttl© 
boy ? I was staying with him for a day or two last winter, and, seiz- 
ing an umbrella when he had the audacity to tell me he was growing 
old, made at him with Macduff's defiance. Upon which he fell into 
the old fierce guard, with the desperation of thirty years ago. 

" Kind remembrances to all friends who kindly remember me. 
" Ever heartily yours, 

" Charles Dickens." 

Every time I had occasion to write to him after the 
war, I stirred up the subject of the readings. On the 2d 
of May, 1866, he says : — 

" Your letter is an excessively difficult one to answer, because I 
really do not know that any sum of money that could be laid down 
would induce me to cross the Atlantic to read. Nor do I think it 
hkely that any one on your side of the great water can be prepared 
to understand the state of the case. For example, I am now just 
finishing a series of thirty readings. The crowds attending them 
have been so astounding, and the relish for them has so far outgone 
all previous experience, that if I were to set myself the task, ' I will 
make such or such a sum of money by devoting myself to readings 



DICKENS. 159 

for a certain time,' I should have to go no further than Bond Street 
or Kegent Street, to have it secured to me in a day. Therefore, if a 
specific offer, and a very large one indeed, were made to me from 
America, I should naturally ask myself, ' Why go through this 
wear and tear, merely to pluck fruit that grows on every bough at 
home?' It is a delightful sensation to move a new people; but I 
have but to go to Paris, and I find the brightest people in the world 
quite ready for me. I say thus much in a sort of desperate en- 
deavor to explain myself to you. I can put no price upon fifty 
readings in America, because I do not know that any possible price 
could pay me for them. And I really cannot say to any one dis- 
posed towards the enterprise, 'Tempt me,' because I have too 
strong a misgiving that he cannot in the nature of things do it. 

" This is the plain truth. If any distinct proposal be submitted to 
me, I will give it a distinct answer. But the chances are a round 
thousand to one that the answer will be no, and therefore I feel 
bound to make the declaration beforehand. 

" . . . . This place has been greatly improved since you were 
here, and we should be heartily glad if you and she could see it. 
" Paithfiilly yours ever, 

" Charles Dickens." 

On the 16tli of October he writes : — 

" Although I perpetually see in the papers that I am coming out 
with a new serial, I assure you I know no more of it at present. I 
am not writing (except for Christmas number of 'All the Year 
Round '), and am going to begin, in the middle of January, a series 
of forty-two readings. Those will probably occupy me until Easter. 
Early in the summer I hope to get to work upon a story that I 
have in my mind. But in what form it wUl appear I do not yet 
know, because when the time comes I shall have to take many cir- 
cumstances into consideration 

" A faint outhne of a castle in the air always dimly hovers be- 
tween me and Rochester, in the great hall of which I see myself 
reading to American audiences. But my domestic surroundings 
must change before the castle takes tangible form. And perhaps / 
may change first, and establish a castle in the other world. So no 
more at present. 

" Believe me ever faithfuUy yours, 

" Charles Dickens." 

In June, 1867, things begin to look more promising, 



i6o YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and I find in one of liis letters, dated the 3d of that month, 
some good news, as follows : — 

" I cannot receive your pleasantest of notes, -without assuring you 
of the interest and gratification that I feel on my side in our alli- 
ance. And now I am going to add a piece of intelligence that I 
hope may not be disagreeable. 

" I am trying hard so to free myself, as to be able to come over to 
read this next winter 1 Whether I may succeed in this endeavor or 
no I cannot yet say, but I am trying hard. So in the mean time 
don't contradict the rumor. In the course of a few mails I hope to 
be able to give you positive and definite information on the subject- 

" My daughter (whom I shall not bring if I come) will answer 
for herself by and by. Understand that I am reaUy endeavoring 
tooth and nail to make my way personally to the American public, 
and that no light obstacles wOl turn me aside, now that my hand 
is in. 

" My dear Fields, faithfully yours always, 

" Charles Dickens." 

This was followed up by another letter, dated the 13th, 
in which he says : — 

" I have this morning resolved to send out to Boston, in the first 
week in August, Mr. Dolby, the secretary and manager of my read- 
ings. He is profoundly versed in the business of those delightfiil in- 
tellectual feasts (!), and will come straight to Ticknor and Fields, and 
will hold solemn council with them, and will then go to New York, 
Philadelphia, Hartford, Washington, etc., etc., and see the rooms for 
himself, and make his estimates. He will then telegraph to me : ' I 
see my way to such and such results. Shall I go on ? ' If I reply, 
' Yes,' I shall stand committed to begin reading in America with 
the month of December. If I reply, * No,' it will be because I do 
not clearly see the game to be worth so large a candle. In either 
case he will come back to me. 

" He is the brother of Madame Sainton Dolby, the celebrated 
singer. I have absolute trust in him and a great regard for him. 
He goes with me everywhere when I read, and manages for me to 
perfection. 

" We mean to keep all this strictly secret, as I beg of you to do, 
until I finally decide for or against. I am beleaguered by every kind 
of speculator in such things on your side of the water ; and it is 
very likely that they would take the rooms over our heads, — to 



DICKENS. _ i6i 

charge me heavily for them, — or would set on foot unheard-of de- 
vices for buying up the tickets, etc., etc., if the probabilities oozed 
out. This is exactly how the case stands now, and I confide it to 
you within a couple of hours after having so far resolved. Dolby 
quite understands that he is to confide in you, similarly, without a 
particle of reserve. 

" Ever faithfiilly yours, 

" Charles Dickeks." 
On the 12tli of July he says : — 

" Our letters will be crossing one another rarely ! I have received 
your cordial answer to my first notion of coming out ; but there has 

not yet been time for me to hear again 

" With kindest regard to ' both your houses,' pubhc and private, 
" Ever faithfiilly yours, 

" Charles Dickens." 

He had engaged to write for " Our Young Folks " " A 
Holiday Eomance," and the following note, dated the 25th 
of July, refers to the story : — 

" Your note of the 12 th is like a cordial of the best sort. I have 
taken it accordingly. 

" Dolby sails in the Java on Saturday, the 3d of next month, and 
will come direct to you. You will find him a fi-ank and capital fel- 
low. He is perfectly acquainted with his business and with his 
chief, and may be trusted without a grain of reserve. 

"I hope the Americans will see the joke of 'Holiday Romance.' 
The writing seems to me so like children's, that dull folks (on any 
side of any water) might perhaps rate it accordingly ! I should 
hke to be beside you when you read it, and particularly when you 
read the Pirate's story. It made me laugh to that extent that my 
people here thought I was out of my wits, until I gave it to them 
to read, when they did likewise. 

" Ever cordially yours, 

" Charles DicKtwa' 

On the 3d of September he breaks out in this wise, 
Dolby having arrived out and made all arrangements for 
the readings : — 

" Your cheering letter of the 21st of August arrived here this 
morning. A thousand thanks for it. 1 begin to think (nautically) 
that I ' head west'ard.' You shall hear from me fuUy and finally 
as soon as Dolby shall have reported personally. 



1 62 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

" The other day I received a letter from Mr. of New York 

(who came over in the winning yacht, and described the voyage in 
the Times), saying he would much like to see me. I made an 
appointment in London, and observed that when he did see me he 
was obviously astonished. "While I was sensible that the magnifi- 
cence of my appearance would fully account for his being overcome, 
I nevertheless angled for the cause of his surprise. He then told 
me that there was a paragraph going round the papers, to the effect 
that I was ' in a critical state of health.' I asked him if he was sure 
it was n't ' cricketing ' state of health ? To which he rephed, Quite. 
I then asked him down here to dinner, and he was again staggered 
by finding me in sporting training ; also much amused. 

" Yesterday's and to-day's post bring me this unaccountable para- 
graph from hosts of uneasy friends, with the enormous and wonder- 
ful addition that ' eminent surgeons ' are sending me to America for 
' cessation from literary labor ' ! ! I So I have written a quiet Une to 
the Times, certifying to my own state of health, and have also 
begged Dixon to do the like in the Athenasum. I mention the 
matter to you, in order that you may contradict, from me, if the 
nonsense should reach America unaccompanied by the truth. But 
I suppose that the New York Herald will probably have got the 
latter from Mr. aforesaid 

" Charles Reade and Wilkie Collins are here ; and the joke of the 
time is to feel my pulse when I appear at table, and also to inveigle 
innocent messengers to come over to the summer-house, where I 
write (the place is quite changed since you were here, and a tunnel 
under the high road connects this shrubbery with the front garden), 
to ask, with their compliments, how I find myself now. 

" If I come to America this next November, even you can hardly 
imagine with what interest I shall try Copperfield on an American 
audience, or, if they give me their heart, how freely and fiilly I 
shall give them mine. "We wiU ask Dolby then whether he ever 
heard it before. 

" I cannot thank you enough for your invaluable help to Dolby. 
He writes that at every turn and moment the sense and knowledge 
and tact of Mr. Osgood are inestimable to him. 
" Ever, my dear Fields, faithfully yours, 

" Charles Dickens." 

Here is a little note dated the 3d of October : — 

" I cannot tell you how much I thank you for your kind little 
letter, which is like a pleasant voice coming across the Atlantic, with 



DICKENS. X63 

that domestic welcome in it which has no substitute on earth. If you 
knew how strongly I am inclined to allow myself the pleasure of 
staying at your house, you would look upon me as a kind of ancient 
Roman (which, I trust in Heaven, I am not) for having the courage 
to say no. But if I gave myself that gratification in the begin- 
ning, I could scarcely hope to get on in the hard ' reading' life, with- 
out offending some kindly disposed and hospitable American friend 
afterwards ; whereas if I observe my English principle on such oc- 
casions, of having no abiding-place but an hotel, and stick to it from 
the first, I may perhaps count on being consistently uncomfortable. 
" The nightly exertion necessitates meals at odd hours, silence and 
rest at impossible times of the day, a general Spartan behavior so 
utterly inconsistent with my nature, that if you were to give me a 
happy inch, I should take an ell, and frightfully disappoint you in 
public. I don't want to do that, if I can help it, and so I will be 
good in spite of myself 

" Ever your afifectionate friend, 

" Charles Dickens." 

A ridiculous paragraph in the papers following close on 
the public announcement that Dickens was coming to 
America in November, drew from him this letter to me, 
dated also early in October : — 

" I hope the telegraph clerks did not mutilate out of recognition 
or reasonable guess the words I added to Dolby's last telegram to 
Boston. ' Tribune London correspondent totally false.' Not only is 
there not a word of truth in the pretended conversation, but it is so 
absurdly unlike me that I cannot suppose it to be even invented by 
any one who ever heard me exchange a word with mortal creature. 
For twenty years I am perfectly certain that I have never made 
any other allusion to the republication of my books in America 
than the good-humored remark, ' that if there had been interna- 
tional copyright between England and the States, I should have 
been a man of very large fortune, instead of a man of moderate 
savings, always supporting a very expensive public position.' Nor 
have I ever been such a fool as to charge the absence of interna- 
tional copyright upon individuals. Nor have I ever been so un- 
generous as to disguise or suppress the fact that I have received 
handsome sums for advance sheets. When I was in the States, I 
said what I had to say on the question, and there an end. I am 
absolutely certain that I have never eince expressed myself, even 



1 64 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

with soreness, on the subject. Reverting to the preposterous fabri- 
cation of the London correspondent, the statement that I ever 
talked about ' these fellows ' who republished my books, or pre- 
tended to know (what I don't know at this instant) who made 
how much out of them, or ever talked of their sending me ' con- 
science money,' is as grossly and completely false as the statement 
that I ever said anything to the effect that I could not be expected 
to have an interest in the American people. And nothing can by 
any possibility be falser than that. Again and again in these pages 
(All the Year Round) I have expressed my interest in them. You 
will see it in the ' Child's History of England.' You will see it in 
the last Preface to ' American Notes.' Every American who has 
ever spoken with me in London, Paris, or where not, knows 
whether I have frankly said, ' You could have no better introduction 
to me than your country.' And for years and years when I have 
been asked about reading in America, my invariable reply has been, 
* I have so many friends there, and constantly receive so many 
earnest letters from personally unknown readers there, that, but for 
domestic reasons, I would go to-morrow.' I think I must, in the 
confidential intercourse between you and me, have written you to 
this effect more than once. 

" The statement of the London correspondent from beginning to 
end is false. It is false in the letter and false in the spirit. He 
may have been misinformed, and the statement may not have 
originated with him. With whomsoever it originated, it never origi- 
nated with me, and consequently is false. More than enough 
about it. 

" As I hope to see you so soon, my dear Fields, and as I am busily 
at work on the Christmas number, I will not make this a longer 
letter than I can help. I thank you most heartily for your proffered 
hospitahty, and need not tell you that if I went to any friend's 
house in America, I would go to yours. But the readings are very 
hard work, and I think I cannot do better than observe the rule on 
that side of the Atlantic which I observe on this, — of never, under 
such circumstances, going to a friend's house, but always staying at 
a hotel. I am able to observe it here, by being consistent and never 
breaking it. If I am equally consistent there, I can (I hope) offend 
no one. 

" Dolby sends his love to you and all his friends (as I do), and is 
^ding up his loins vigorously. 

" Ever, my dear Fields, heartily and affectionately yours, 

" Charles Dickens.' 



DICKENS. i6s 

Before sailing in November he sent off this note to me 
from the office of All the Year Eound : — 

" I received your more than acceptable letter yesterday morning, 
and consequently am able to send you this line of acknowledgment 
by the next mail. Please God we will have that walk among the 
autumn leaves, before the readings set in. 

" You may have heard from Dolby that a gorgeous repast is to be 
given to me to-morrow, and that it is expected to be a notable 
demonstration. I shall try, in what I say, to state my American 
case exactly. I have a strong hope and belief that within the com- 
pass of a couple of minutes or so I can put it, with perfect truthful- 
ness, in the hght that my American friends would be best pleased 
to see me place it in. Either so, or my instinct is at fault. 

" My daughters and their aunt unite with me in kindest loves. 
As I write, a shrill prolongation of the message comes in from the 
next room, ' Tell them to take care of you-u-u ! ' 

" Tell Longfellow, with my love, that I am charged by Forster 
(who has been very ill of diffused gout and bronchitis) with a copy 
of his Sir John Eliot. 

" I will bring you out the early proof of the Christmas number. 
We publish it here on the 12th of December. I am planning it 
(No Thoroughfare) out into a play for Wilkie CoUins to manipulate 
after I sail, and have arranged for Fechter to go to the Adelphi 
Theatre and play a Swiss in it. It will be brought out the day 
after Christmas day. 

" Here, at Boston Wharf, and everywhere else, 

" Yours heartily and affectionately, 

" C. D." 

On a blustering evening in November, 1867, Dickens 
arrived in Boston Harbor, on his second visit to America. 
A few of his friends, under the guidance of the Collector 
of the port, steamed down in the custom-house boat to 
welcome him. It was pitch dark before we sighted the 
Cuba and ran alongside. The great steamer stopped for 
a few minutes to take us on board, and Dickens's cheery 
voice greeted me before I had time to distinguish him on 
the deck of the vessel. The news of the excitement the 
sale of the tickets to his readings had occasioned had been 
carried to him by the pilot, twenty miles out. He was in 



i66 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

capital spirits over the cheerful account that all was going 
on so well, and I thought he never looked in better health. 
The voyage had been a good one, and the ten days' rest 
on shipboard had strengthened him amazingly he said. 
As we were told that a crowd had assembled in East Bos- 
ton, we took him in our little tug and landed him safely 
at Long Wharf in Boston, where carriages were in waiting. 
Eooms had been taken for him at the Parker House, and 
in half an hour after he had reached the hotel he was sit- 
ting down to dinner with haK a dozen friends, quite pre- 
pared, he said, to give the first reading in America that 
very night, if desirable. Assurances that the kindest feel- 
ings towards him existed everywhere put him in great 
spirits, and he seemed happy to be among us. On Sun- 
day he visited the School Ship and said a few words of 
encouragement and counsel to the boys. He began his 
long walks at once, and girded himseK up for the hard 
winter's work before him. Steadily refusing all invita- 
tions to go out during the weeks he was reading, he only 
went into one other house besides the Parker, habitually, 
during his stay in Boston. Every one who was present 
remembers the delighted crowds that assembled nightly 
in the Tremont Temple, and no one who heard Dickens, 
during that eventful month of December, will forget the 
sensation produced by the great author, actor, and reader. 
Hazlitt says of Kean's Othello, " The tone of voice in 
which he delivered the beautiful apostrophe 'Then, O, 
farewell,' struck on the heart like the swelling notes of 
some divine music, like the sound of years of departed 
happiness." There were thrills of pathos in Dickens's 
readings (of David Copperfield, for instance) which Kean 
himself never surpassed in dramatic effect. 

He went from Boston to New York, carrying with him a 
severe catarrh contracted in our climate. In reality much 
of the time during his reading in Boston he was quite ill 



DICKENS, 167 

from tlie effects of the disease, but he fought courageously 
against its effects, and always came up, on the night of 
the reading, all right. Several times I feared he would 
be obliged to postpone the readings, and I am sure almost 
any one else would have felt compelled to do so ; but he 
declared no man had a right to break an engagement 
with the public, if he were able to be out of bed. His 
spirit was wonderful, and, although he lost all appe- 
tite and could partake of very little food, he was always 
cheerful and ready for his work when the evening came 
round. Every morning his table was covered with invita- 
tions to dinners and all sorts of entertainments, but he 
said, " I came for hard work, and I must try to fulfil the 
expectations of the American public." He did accept a 
dinner which was tendered to him by some of his literary 
friends in Boston ; but the day before it was to come off he 
was so ill he fslt obliged to ask that the banquet might be 
given up. The strain upon his strength and nerves was 
very great during all the months he remained in the 
country, and only a man of iron will could have accom- 
plished all he did. And here let me say, that although 
he was accustomed to talk and write a great deal about 
eating and drinking, I have rarely seen a man eat and 
drink less. He liked to dilate in imagination over the 
brewing of a bowl of punch, but I always noticed that 
when the punch was ready, he drank less of it than any 
one who might be present. It was the sentiment of the 
thing and not the thing itself that engaged his attention. 
He liked to have a little supper every night after a read- 
ing, and have three or four friends round the table with 
him, but he only pecked at the viands as a bird might do, 
and I scarcely saw him eat a hearty meal during his whole 
stay in the country. Both at Parker's Hotel in Boston, 
and at the Westminster in New York, everything was 
arranged by the proprietors for his comfort and happiness, 



i68 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and tempting dishes to pique his invalid appetite were 
sent up at different hours of the day, with the hope that 
he might be induced to try unwonted things and get up 
again the habit of eating more ; but the influenza, that 
seized him with such masterful power, held the strong 
man down till he left the country. 

One of the first letters I had from him, after he had 
begun his reading tour, was dated from the Westminster 
Hotel in New York, on the 15th of January, 1868. 

My dear Fields : On coming back from Philadelphia just now 
(three o'clock) I was welcomed by your cordial letter. It was a 
delightful welcome and did me a world of good. 

The cold remains just as it was (beastly), and where it was (in 
my head). "We have left off referring to the hateful subject, except 
in emphatic sniffs on my part, convulsive wheezes, and resounding 
sneezes. 

The Philadelphia audience ready and bright. I think they un- 
derstood the Carol better than Copperfield, but they were bright 
and responsive as to both. They also highly appreciated your 
friend Mr. Jack Hopkins. A most excellent hotel there, and every- 
thing satisfactory. While on the subject of satisfaction, I know 
you will be pleased to hear that a long run is confidently expected 
for the No Thoroughfare drama. Although the piece is well cast 
and well played, my letters tell me that Fechter is so remarkably 
fine as to play down the whole company. The Times, in its account 
of it, said that " Mr. Fechter" (in the Swiss mountain scene, and in 
the Swiss Hotel) "was practically alone upon the stage." It is 
splendidly got up, and the Mountain Pass (I planned it with the 
scene-painter) was loudly cheered by the whole house. Of course 
I knew that Fechter would tear himself to pieces rather than fall 
short, but I was not prepared for his contriving to get the pity and 
sympathy of the audience out of his passionate love for Marguerite. 

My dear fellow, you cannot miss me more than I miss you and 
yours. And Heaven knows how gladly I would substitute Boston 
for Chicago, Detroit, and Co. ! But the tour is fast shaping itself out 
into its last details, and we must remember that there is a clear 
fortnight in Boston, not counting the four Farewells. I look for- 
ward to that fortnight as a radiant landing-place in the series 

Eash youth 1 No presumptuous hand should try to make the 



DICKENS. 169 

punch, except in the presence of the hoary sage who pens these 
lines. Witli him on the spot to perceive and avert impending fail- 
ure, with timely words of wisdom to arrest the erring hand and 
curb the straying judgment, and, with such gentle expressions of 
encouragement as his stern experience may justify, to cheer the 
aspirant with faint hopes of future excellence, — with these con- 
ditions observed, the daring mind may scale the heights of sugar 
and contemplate the depths of lemon. Otherwise not. 

Dolby is at Washington, and will return in the night. is 

on guard. He made a most brilliant appearance before the Phila- 
delphia public, and looked hard at them. The mastery of his eye 
diverted their attention from his boots : charming in themselves, but 
(unfortunately) two left ones. 

I send my hearty and enduring love. Your kindness to the 
British Wanderer is deeply inscribed in his heart. 

When I think of L 's story about Dr. Webster, I feel like 

the lady in Nickleby who •' has had a sensation of alternate cold 
and biling water running down her back ever since." 

Ever, my dear Fields, your affectionate friend, 

CD. 

His birthday, 7tli of February, was spent in Washing- 
ton, and on the 9th of the month he sent this little note 
from Baltimore : — 

Baitimoee, Sunday, February 9, 1868. 

My dear Fields : I thank you heartily for your pleasant note (I 
can scarcely tell you how pleasant it was to receive the same) and 
for the beautiful flowers that you sent me on my birthday. For 
which — and much more — my loving thanks to both. 

In consequence of the Washington papers having referred to the 
august 7th of this month, my room was on that day a blooming 
garden. Nor were flowers alone represented there. The silver- 
smith, the goldsmith, the landscape-painter, all sent in their contri- 
butions. After the reading was done at night, the whole audience 
rose ; and it was spontaneous, hearty, and affecting. 

I was very much surprised by the President's face and manner. 
It is, in its way, one of the most remarkable faces I have ever seen. 
Not imaginative, but very powerful in its firmness (or perhaps ob- 
stinacy), strength of will, and steadiness of purpose. There is a 
reticence in it too, curiously at variance with that first unfortunate 
speech of his. A man not to be turned or trifled with. A man (I 
should say) who must be killed to be got out of the way. His 
8 



I70 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

manners, perfectly composed. We looked at one another pretty 
hard. There was an air of chronic anxiety upon him. But not a 
crease or a ruffle in his dress, and his papers were as composed as 
himself. (Mr. Thornton was going in to dehver his credentials, im- 
mediately afterwards.) 

This day fortnight will find me, please God, in my " native Bos- 
ton." I wish I were there to-day. 

Ever, my dear Fields, your affectionate fi-iend, 

Charles Dickens, 

Chairman Missionary Socitty. 

When he returned to Boston in the latter part of the 
month, after his fatiguing campaign in New York, Pliila- 
delphia, Baltimore, and Washington, he seemed far from 
well, and one afternoon sent round from the Parker House 
to me this little note, explaining why he could not go out 
on our accustomed walk. 

" I have been terrifying Dolby out of his wits, by setting in for a 
paroxysm of sneezing, and it would be madness in me, with such a 
cold, and on such a night, and with to-morrow's reading before me, 
to go out. I need not add that I shall be heartily glad to see you 
if you have time. Many thanks for the Life and Letters of Wilder 
Dwight. I shall " save up " that book, to read on the passage 
home. After turning over the leaves, I have shut it up and put it 
away ; for I am a great reader at sea, and wish to reserve the in- 
terest that I find awaiting me in the personal following of the sad 
war. Good God, when one stands among the hearths that war has 
broken, what an awful consideration it is that such a tremendous 
evU must be sometimes ! 

" Ever affectionately yours, 

"Charles Dickens." 



I will dispose here of the question often asked me by cor- 
respondents, and lately renewed in many epistles, " Was 
Charles Dickens a believer in our Saviour's life and teach- 
ings ? " Persons addressing to me such inquiries must 
be profoundly ignorant of the works of the great author, 
whom they endeavor by implication to place among the 
" Unbelievers." If anywhere, out of the Bible, Grod's 



DICKENS. 171 

goodness and mercy are solemnly commended to the 
world's attention, it is in the pages of Dickens. I had 
supposed that these written words of his, which have 
been so extensively copied both in Europe and America, 
from his last will and testament, dated the 12th of May, 
1869, would forever remain an emphatic testimony to his 
Christian faith : — 

" I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try 
to guide themselves by the teachings of the New Testament." 

I wish it were in my power to bring to the knowledge 
of aU who doubt the Christian character of Charles Dick- 
ens certain other memorable words of his, written years 
ago, with reference to Christmas. They are not as famil- 
iar as many beautiful things from the same pen on the 
same subject, for the paper which enshrines them has not 
as yet been collected among his authorized works. Listen 
to these loving words in wliich the Christian writer has 
embodied the life of his Saviour : — 

" Hark I the Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep ! 
What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them 
set forth on the Christmas tree ? Known before all others, keeping 
far apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed. An 
angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field ; some travellers, 
with eyes uplifted, following a star ; a baby in a manger ; a child in 
a spacious temple, talking with grave men ; a solemn figure with a 
mild and beautifiil face, raising a dead girl by the hand ; again, near 
a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life ; a 
crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber 
where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes ; 
the same in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship ; again, on a 
sea-shore, teaching a great multitude ; again, with a child upon his 
knee, and other children round ; again, restoring sight to the blind, 
speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength 
to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant ; again, dying upon a cross, 
watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth 
beginning to shake, and only one voice heard, — ' Forgive them, for 
they know not what they do ! '" 



172 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

The writer of these pages begs to say here, most respect- 
fully and emphatically, that he will not feel himseK bound, 
in future, to reply to any inquiries, from however well- 
meaning correspondents, as to whether Charles Dickens 
was an " Unbeliever," or a " Unitarian," or an " Episcopa- 
lian," or whether " he ever went to church in his Hfe," or 
"used improper language," or "drank enough to hurt 
him." He was human, very human, but he was no scoffer 
or doubter. His religion was of the heart, and his faith 
beyond questioning. He taught the world, said Dean 
Stanley over his new-made grave in Westminster Abbey, 
great lessons of " the eternal value of generosity, of pur- 
ity, of kindness, and of unselfishness," and by his fruits 
he shall be known of all men. 

Let me commend to the attention of my numerous 
nameless correspondents, who have attempted to soil the 
moral character of Dickens, the following little incident, 
related to me by himself, during a summer-evening walk 
among the Kentish meadows, a few months before he 
died. I will try to tell the story, if possible, as simply 
and naturally as he told it to me. 

" I chanced to be travelling some years ago," he said, 
" in a railroad carriage between Liverpool and London, 
Beside myself there were two ladies and a gentleman 
occupying the carriage. We happened to be all strangers 
to each other, but I noticed at once that a clergyman was 
of the party. I was occupied with a ponderous article in 
the ' Times,' when the sound of my own name drew my 
attention to the fact that a conversation was going for- 
ward among the three other persons in the carriage with 
reference to myself and my books. One of the ladies 
was perusing ' Bleak House,' then lately published, and 
the clergyman had commenced a conversation with the 
ladies by asking what book they were reading. On being 
told the author's name and the title of the book, he ex- 



DICKENS. 173 

pressed himself greatly grieved that any lady in England 
should be willing to take up the writings of so vile a 
character as Charles Dickens. Both the ladies showed 
great surprise at the low estimate the clergyman put upon 
an author whom they had been accustomed to read, to 
say the least, with a certain degree of pleasure. They 
were evidently much shocked at what the man said of 
the immoral tendency of these books, which they seemed 
never before to have suspected ; but when he attacked 
the author's private character, and told monstrous stories 
of his immoralities in every direction, the volume was 
shut up and consigned to the dark pockets of a travelling 
bag. I listened in wonder and astonishment, behind my 
newspaper, to stories of myself, which if they had been 
true would have consigned any man to a prison for life. 
After my fictitious biographer had occupied himself for 
nearly an hour with the eloquent recital of my delin- 
quencies and crimes, I very quietly joined in the conver- 
sation. Of course I began by modestly doubting some 
statements which I had just heard, touching the author 
of ' Bleak House,' and other unimportant works of a 
similar character. The man stared at me, and evidently 
considered my appearance on the conversational stage an 
intrusion and an impertinence. ' You seem to speak,' I 
said, ' from personal knowledge of Mr. Dickens. Are you 
acquainted with him ? ' He rather evaded the question, 
but, following him up closely, I compelled him to say that 
he had been talking, not from his own knowledge of the 
author in question ; but he said he knew for a certainty 
that every statement he had made was a true one. I 
then became more earnest in my inquiries for proofs, 
which he arrogantly declined giving. The ladies sat by 
in silence, listening intently to what was going forward. 
An author they had been accustomed to read for amuse- 
ment had been traduced for the first time in their hearing, 



174 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and they were waiting to learn what I had to say in 
refutation of the clergyman's charges. I was taking up 
his vile stories, one by one, and stamping them as false in 
every particular, when the man grew furious, and asked 
me if I knew Dickens personally. I replied, ' Perfectly 
well ; no man knows him better than I do ; and all your 
stories about him from beginning to end, to these ladies, 
are unmitigated lies.' The man became livid with rage, 
and asked for my card. * You shall have it,' I said, 
and, coolly taking out one, I presented it to Mm without 
bowing. We were just then nearing the station in Lon- 
don, so that I was spared a longer interview with my 
truthful companion; but, if I were to live a hundred 
years, I should not forget the abject condition into which 
the narrator of my crimes was instantly plunged. His 
face turned white as his cravat, and his lips refused to 
utter words. He seemed like a wilted vegetable, and as 
if his legs belonged to somebody else. The ladies became 
aware of the situation at once, and, bidding them ' good 
day,' I stepped smilingly out of the carriage. Before I 
could get away from the station the man had mustered 
up strength sufficient to follow me, and his apologies were 
so nauseous and craven, that I pitied him from my soul. 
I left him with this caution, ' Before you make charges 
against the character of any man again, about whom 
you know nothing, and of whose works you are utterly 
ignorant, study to be a seeker after Truth, and avoid 
Lying as you would eternal perdition.'" 

I never ceased to wonder at Dickens's indomitable 
cheerfulness, even when he was suffering from ill health, 
and could not sleep more than two or three hours out of 
the twenty-four. He made it a point never to inflict on 
another what he might be painfully enduring himself, 
and I have seen him, with what must have been a great 
effort, arrange a merry meeting for some friends, when I 



DICKENS. 175 

knew that almost any one else under similar circum- 
stances would have sought relief in bed. 

One evening at a little dinner given by himself to half 
a dozen friends in Boston, he came out very strong. His 
influenza lifted a little, as he said afterwards, and he took 
advantage of the lull. Only his own pen could possibly 
give an idea of that hilarious night, and I will merely 
attempt a brief reference to it. As soon as we were 
seated at the table, I read in his lustrous eye, and heard 
in his jovial voice, that all solemn forms were to be dis- 
pensed with on that occasion, and that merriment might 
be confidently expected. To the end of the feast there 
was no let up to his magnificent cheerfulness and humor. 

J B , ex-minister plenipotentiary as he was, went 

in for nonsense, and he, I am sure, will not soon forget 
how undignified we all were, and what screams of laugh- 
ter went up from his own uncontrollable throat. Among 
other tomfooleries, we had an imitation of scenes at an 
English hustings, Dickens bringing on his candidate (his 
friend D ), and I opposing him with mine (the ex- 
minister). Of course there was nothing spoken in the 
speeches worth remembering, but it was Dickens's man- 
ner that carried off the whole thing. D necessarily 

now wears his hair so widely parted in the middle that 
only two little capillary scraps are left, just over his ears, to 
show what kind of thatch once covered his jolly cranium. 
Dickens pretended that his candidate was superior to the 
other, because he had no hair ; and that mine, being pro- 
fusely supplied with that commodity was in consequence 
disqualified in a marked degree for an election. His speech, 
for volubility and nonsense, was nearly fatal to us alL 
We roared and writhed in agonies of laughter, and the 
candidates themselves were literally choking and crying 
with the humor of the thing. But the fun culminated 
when I tried to get a hearing in behalf of my man^ and 



176 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Dickens drowned all my attempts to be heard witli imita- 
tive jeers of a boisterous election mob. He seemed to 
have as many voices that night as the human throat is 
capable of, and the repeated interrupting shouts, among 
others, of a pretended husky old man bawling out at 
intervals, " Three cheers for the bald 'un ! " " Down vith 
the hairy aristocracy ! " " Up vith the little shiny chap 
on top ! " and other similar outbursts, I can never forget. 
At last, in sheer exhaustion, we all gave in, and agreed to 
break up and thus save our lives, if it were not already 
too late to make the attempt. 

The extent and variety of Dickens's tones were won- 
derful. Once he described to me in an inimitable way a 
scene he witnessed many years ago at a London theatre, 
and I am certain no professional ventriloquist could have 
reproduced it better. I could never persuade him to 
repeat the description in presence of others ; but he did it 
for me several times during our walks into the country, 
where he was, of course, unobserved. His recital of the 
incident was irresistibly droll, and no words of mine can 
give the situation even, as he gave it. He said he was 
once sitting in the pit of a London theatre, when two 
men came in and took places directly in front of him. 
Both were evidently strangers from the country, and not 
very familiar with the stage. One of them was stone 
deaf, and relied entirely upon his friend to keep him 
informed of the dialogue and story of the play as it went 
on, by having bawled into his ear, word for word, as near 
as possible what the actors and actresses were saying. 
The man who could hear became intensely interested in 
the play, and kept close watch of the stage. The deaf 
man also shared in the progressive action of the drama, 
and rated his friend soundly, in a loud voice, if a stitch 
in the story of the play were inadvertently dropped. 
Dickens gave the two voices of these two spectators with 



CHARLES DICKENS: HIS WIFE, AND HER SISTER 
GEORGINA HOGARTH 




/ y 



«ff/ 






DICKENS. 177 

his best comic and dramatic power. Notwitlistanding 
the roars of the audience, for the scene in the pit grew 
immensely funny to them as it went on, the deaf man. 
and his friend were too much interested in the main busi- 
ness of the evening to observe that they were noticed. 
One bawled louder, and the other, with his elevated ear- 
trumpet, listened more intently than ever. At length the 
scene culminated in a most unexpected manner. " Now," 
screamed the hearing man to the deaf one, " they are going 
to elope ! " " Who is going to elope ? " asked the deaf 
man, in a loud, vehement tone. " Why, them two, the 
young man in the red coat and the girl in a white gown, 
that 's a talking together now, and just going off the 
stage ! " " Well, then, you must have missed teUing rae 
something they 've said before," roared the other in an 
enraged and stentorian voice ; " for there was nothing in 
their conduct all the evening, as you have been represent- 
ing it to me, that would warrant them in such a proceed- 
ing!" At which the audience could not bear it any 
longer, and screamed their delight till the curtain felL 

Dickens was always planning something to interest and 
amuse his friends, and when in America he taught us 
several games arranged by himseK, which we played again 
and again, he taking part as our instructor. Wliile he 
was travelling from point to point, he was cogitating fresh 
charades to be acted when we should again meet. It was 
at Baltimore that he first conceived the idea of a walking- 
match, which should take place on his return to Boston, 
and he drew up a set of humorous " articles," which he 
sent to me with this injunction, " Keep them in a place 
of profound safety, for attested execution, until my arrival 
in Boston." He went into this matter of the walking- 
match with as much earnest directness as if he were 
planning a new novel. The articles, as prepared by him- 
seK, are thus drawn up : — 



178 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

'" Articles of agreement entered into at Baltimore, in the United 
States of America, this third day of February in the year of our 

Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight, between 

, British subject, alias the Man of Ross, and , 

American citizen, alias the Boston Bantam. 

" Whereas, some Bounce having arisen between the above men 
in reference to feats of pedestrianism and agility, they have agreed 
to settle their differences and prove who is the better man, by 
means of a walking-match for two hats a side and the glory of their 
respective countries ; and whereas they agree that the said match 
shall come off, whatsoever the weather, on the Mill Dam Road out- 
side Boston, on Saturday, the 29th day of this present month ; and 
whereas they agree that the personal attendants on themselves 
during the whole walk, and also the umpires and starters and de- 
clarers of victory in the match shall be of Boston, known 

in sporting circles as Massachusetts Jemmy, and Charles Dickens of 
FalstafF's Gad's Hill, whose surprising performances (without the 
least variation) on that truly national instrument, the American 
catarrh, have won for him the well-merited title of the G-ad's Hill 
Gasper : — 

" 1. The men are to be started, on the day appointed, by Massa- 
chusetts Jemmy and The Gasper. 

" 2. Jemmy and The Gasper are, on some previous day, to walk 
cut at the rate of not less than four miles an hour by the Gasper's 
watch, for one hour and a half. At the expiration of that one hour 
and a half they are to carefully note the place at which they halt. 
On the match's coming off they are to station themselves in the 
middle of the road, at that precise point, and the men (keeping 
clear of them and of each other) are to turn round them, right 
shoulder inward, and walk back to the starting-point. The man 
declared by them to pass the starting-point first is to be the victor 
and the winner of the match, 

" 3. No jostling or fouling allowed, 

" 4. All cautions or orders issued to the men by the umpires, 
starters, and declarers of victory to be considered final and admitting 
of no appeal, 

" 5. A sporting narrative of the match to be written by The Gas- 
per within one week after its coming off, and the same to be duly 
printed (at the expense of the subscribers to these articles) on a 
broadside. The said broadside to be framed and glazed, and one 
copy of the same to be carefully preserved by each of the sub- 
Bcribers to these articles. 



DICKENS. 179 

" 6. The men to show on the evening of the day of walking, at 
six o'clock precisely, at the Parker House, Boston, when and where 
a dinner will be given them by The Gasper. The Gasper to occupy 
the chair, faced by Massachusetts Jemmy. The latter promptly 
and formally to invite, as soon as may be after the date of these 
presents, the following guests to honor the said dinner with their 
presence ; that is to say [here follow the names of a few of hie 
friends, whom he wished to be invited]. 

" Now, lastly. In token of their accepting the trusts and offices 
by these articles conferred upon them, these articles are solemnly 
and formally signed by Massachusetts Jemmy and by the Gad's Hill 
Gasper, as well as by the men themselves. 

" Signed by the Man of Ross, otherwise 



" Signed by the Boston Bantam, otherwise . 

" Signed by Massachusetts Jemmy, otherwise . 

" Signed by the Gad's Hill Gasper, otherwise Charles Dickens. 
" Witness to the signatures, ." 

When lie returned to Boston from Baltimore, he pro- 
posed that I should accompany him over the walking- 
ground " at the rate of not less than four miles an hour, 
for one hour and a half" I shall not soon forget the tre- 
mendous pace at which he travelled that day. I have 
seen a great many walkers, but never one with whom I 
found it such hard work to keep up. Of course his object 
was to stretch out the space as far as possible for our 
friends to travel on the appointed day. With watch in 
hand, Dickens strode on over the Mill Dam toward New- 
ton Centre. When we reached the turning-point, and 
had established the extreme limit, we both felt that we 
had given the men who were to walk in the match excel- 
lent good measure. All along the road people had stared 
at us, wondering, I suppose, why two men on such a 
blustering day should be pegging away in the middle of 
the road as if life depended on the speed they were get- 
ting over the ground. We had walked together many a 
mile before this, but never at such a rate as on this day. 
I had never seen his full power tested before, and I covdd 



i8o YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

not but feel great admiration for his walking pluck. "We 
were both greatly heated, and, seeing a little shop by the 
roadside, we went in for refreshments. A few sickly- 
looking oranges were all we could obtain to quench our 
thirst, and we seized those and sat down on the shop 
door-steps, tired and panting. After a few minutes' rest 
we started again and walked back to town. Thirteen 
miles' stretch on a brisk winter day did neither of us any 
harm, and Dickens was in great spirits over the match 
that was so soon to come off. We agreed to walk over 
the ground again on the appointed day, keeping company 
with our respective men. Here is the account that Dick- 
ens himself drew up, of that day's achievement, for the 
broadside. 

" THE SPORTING NARRATIVE. 

"The Men. 

" The Boston Bantam (alias Bright Chanticleer) is a young bird, 
though too old to be caught with chaflf. He comes of a thorough 
game breed, and has a clear though modest crow. He pulls down 
the scale at ten stone and a half and add a pound or two. His pre- 
vious performances in the pedestrian hne have not been numerous. 
He once achieved a neat little match against time in two left boots 
at Philadelphia ; but this must be considered as a pedestrian eccen- 
tricity, and cannot be accepted by the rigid chronicler as high art. 
The old mower with the scythe and hour-glass has not yet laid his 
mauley heavily on the Bantam's frontispiece, but be has had a grip 
at the Bantam's top feathers, and in plucking out a handful was 
very near making him like the great Napoleon Bonaparte (with the 
exception of the victualling department), when the ancient one 
found himself too much occupied to carry out the idea, and gave it 
up. The Man of Ross (alias old Alick Pope, alias Allourpraises- 
whyshouldlords, etc.) is a thought and a half too fleshy, and, if he 
accidentally sat down upon his baby, would do it to the tune of 
fourteen stone. This popular codger is of the rubicund and jovial 
sort, and has long been known as a piscatorial pedestrian on the 
banks of the Wye. But Izaak Walton had n't pace, — look at his 
book and you 'U find it slow, — and when that article comes in 



DICKENS. i8i 

question, the fishing-rod may prove to some of his disciples a rod in 
pickle. Howbeit, the Man of Ross is a lively ambler, and has a 
smart stride of his own. 

" The Training. 

" If vigorous attention to diet could have brought both men up 
to the post in tip-top feather, their condition would have left noth- 
ing to be desired. But both might have had more daily practice in 
the poetry of motion. Their breathings were confined to an occa- 
sional Baltimore burst under the guidance of The Gasper, and to 
an amicable toddle between themselves at Washington. 

" The Course. 

" Six miles and a half, good measure, from the first tree on the 
Mill Dam Road, lies the Uttle village (with no refireshments in it 
but five oranges and a bottle of blacking) of Newton Centre. Here 
Massachusetts Jemmy and The Grasper had established the turning- 
point. The road comprehended every variety of inconvenience to 
test the mettle of the men, and nearly the whole of it was covered 
with snow. 

"The Start 

was effected beautifully. The men taking their stand in exact line 
at the starting-post, the first tree aforesaid, received from The 
Gasper the warning, " Are you ready ? " and then the signal, " One, 
two, three. Go ! " They got away exactly together, and at a 
Bpinning speed, waited on by Massachusetts Jemmy and the Gasper. 

" The Race. 

" In the teeth of an intensely cold and bitter wind, before which 
the snow flew fast and furious across the road from right to left, the 
Bantam slightly led. But the Man responded to the challenge, and 
soon breasted him. For the first three miles each led by a yard or 
60 alternately; but the walking was very even. On four miles 
being called by The Gasper the men were side by side ; and then 
ensued one of the best periods of the race, the same splitting pace 
being held by both through a heavy snow-wreath and up a dragging 
hill. At this point it was anybody's game, a dollar on Rossius and 
two half-doUars on the member of the feathery tribe. When five 
miles were called, the men were still shoulder to shoulder. At 
about six miles The Gasper put on a tremendous spirt to leave the 
men behind and establish himself at the turning-point at the en- 



i82 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

trance of the village. He afterwards declared that he received a 
mental knock-downer on taking his station and facing about, to 
find Bright Chanticleer close in upon him, and Rossius steaming up 
like a locomotive. The Bantam rounded first; Rossius rounded 
wide ; and firom that moment the Bantam steadily shot ahead. 
Tliough both were breathed at the town, the Bantam quickly got 
his bellows into obedient condition, and blew away like an orderly 
blacksmith in full work. The forcing-pumps of Rossius likewise 
proved themselves tough and true, and warranted first-rate, but he 
fell oflf in pace ; whereas the Bantam pegged away with his Uttle 
drumsticks, as if he saw his wives and a peck of barley waiting for 
him at the family perch. Continually gaining upon him of Ross, 
Chanticleer gradually drew ahead within a very few yards of half a 
mUe, finally doing the whole distance in two hours and forty-eight 
minutes. Ross had ceased to compete three miles short of' the win- 
ning-post, but bravely walked it out and came in seven minutes 

later. 

*' Remarks. 

" The difficulties under which this plucky match was walked can 
only be appreciated by those who were on the ground. To the ex- 
cessive rigor of the icy blast and the depth and state of the snow 
must be added the constant scattering of the latter into the air and 
into the eyes of the men, while heads of hair, beards, eyelashes, and 
eyebrows were frozen into icicles. To breathe at all, in such a 
rarefied and disturbed atmosphere, was not easy ; but to breathe up 
to the required mark was genuine, slogging, ding-dong, hard labor. 
That both competitors were game to the backbone, doing what 
they did under such conditions, was evident to all ; but to his game- 
ness the courageous Bantam added unexpected endurance and (like 
the sailor's watch that did three hours to the cathedral clock's one) 
unexpected powers of going when wound up. The knowing eye 
oould not fail to detect considerable disparity between the lads ; 
Chanticleer beings as Mrs. Cratchit said of Tiny Tim, " very light 
to carry," and Rossius promising fair to attain the rotundity of the 
Anonymous Cove in the Epigram : — 

' And when he walks the streets the paviors cry, 
" God bless you, sir ! " — and lay their rammers by.' " 

The dinner at the Parker House, after the fatigues of 
the day, was a brilliant success. The Great International 
Walking-Match was over ; America had won, and England 



DICKENS. 183 

was nowhere. The victor and the vanquished were the 
heroes of the occasion, for both had shown great powers 
of endurance and done their work in capital time. "We 
had no set speeches at the table, for we had voted elo- 
quence a bore before we sat down. David Copperfield, 
Hyperion, Hosea Biglow, the Autocrat, and the Bad Boy- 
were present, and there was no need of set speeches. The 
ladies present, being all daughters of America, smiled 
upon the champion, and we had a great, good time. The 
banquet provided by Dickens was profusely decorated 
with flowers, arranged by himseK. The master of the 
feast was in his best mood, albeit his country had lost ; 
and we all declared, when we bade him good night, that 
none of us had ever enjoyed a festival more. 

Soon after this Dickens started on his reading travels 
again, and I received from him frequent letters from 
various parts of the country. On the 8th of March, 
1868, he writes from a Western city : — 

Sunday, 8th March, 1868. 

Mr DEAR Fields : "We came here yesterday most comfortably in 
a " drawing-room car," of which (Rule Britannia!) we bought ex- 
clusive possession. is rather a depressing feather in the eagle's 

wing, when considered on a Sunday and in a thaw. Its hotel ia 
likewise a dreary institution. But I have an impression that w© 
must be in the wrong one, and buoy myself up with a devout belief 
in the other, over the way. The awakening to consciousness this 
morning on a lop-sided bedstead facing nowhere, in a room holding 
nothing but sour dust, was more terrible than the being afraid to 
go to bed last night. To keep ourselves up we played whist 
(double dummy) until neither of us could bear to speak to the other 
any more. We had previously supped on a tough old nightmare 
named buffalo. 

What do you think of a " Fowl de poulet " ? or a " Paettie de 
Shay " ? or " Celary " ? or " Murange with cream " ? Because all 
these delicacies are in the printed bill of fare ! If Mrs. Fields 
would like the recipe, how to make a " Paettie de Shay," telegraph 
instantly, and the recipe shall be purchased. We asked the Irish 



i84 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

waiter what this dish was, and he said it was " the Frinch name the 
steward giv' to oyster pattie." It is usually washed down, I believe, 
with "Movseaux," or " Table Madeira," or "Abasinthe," or " Cur- 
raco," all of which drinks are on the wine list. I mean to drink 

my love to after dinner in Movseaux. Your ruggeder nature 

shall be pledged in Abasinthe. 

Ever afifectionately, 

Charles Dickens. 

On tlie 19th of March lie writes from Albany : — 

Albany, 19th March, 1868. 

Mt dear : I should have answered your kind and welcome 

note before now, but that we have been in difficulties. After creep- 
ing through water for miles upon miles, our train gave it up as a 
bad job between Rochester and this place, and stranded us, early 
on Tuesday afternoon, at Utica. There we remained all night, and 
at six o'clock yesterday morning were ordered up to get ready for 
starting again. Then we were countermanded. Then we were 
once more told to get ready. Then we were told to stay where we 
were. At last we got off at eight o'clock, and after paddling 
through the flood until half past three, got landed here, — to the 
great relief of our minds as well as bodies, for the tickets were all 
sold out for last night. We had all sorts of adventures by the way, 
among which two of the most notable were : — 

1. Picking up two trains out of the water, in which the pas- 
sengers had been composedly sitting all night, until relief should 
arrive. 

2. Unpacking and releasing into the open country a great train 
of cattle and sheep that had been in the water I don't know how 
long, and that had begun in their imprisonment to eat each other. 
I never could have realized the strong and dismal expressions of 
which the faces of sheep are capable, had I not seen the haggard 
countenances of this unfortunate flock as they were tumbled out of 
their dens and picked themselves up and made off, leaping wildly 
(many with broken legs) over a great mound of thawing snow, 
and over the worried body of a deceased companion. Their misery 
was so very human that I was sorry to recognize several intimate 
acquaintances conducting themselves m this forlornly gymnastic 
manner. 

As there is no question that our friendship began in some pre- 
vious state of existence many years ago, I am now going to make 
bold to mention a discovery we have made concerning Springfield. 







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DICKENS. 185 

We find that by remaining there next Saturday and Sunday, instead 
of coming on to Boston, we shall save several hours' travel, and 
much vrear and tear of our baggage and camp-followers. Ticknor 
reports the Springfield hotel excellent. Now will you and Fields 
come and pass Sunday with us there ? It will be delightful, if yoa 
can. If you cannot, will you defer our Boston dinner until the fol- 
lowing Sunday ? Send me a hopeful word to Springfield (Massa- 
soit House) in reply, please. 

Lowell's delightful note enclosed with thanks. Do make a trial 
for Springfield. We saw Professor White at Syracuse, and went 
out for a ride with him. Queer quarters at Utica, and nothing par- 
ticular to eat; but the people so very anxious to please, that it 
was better than the best cuisine. I made a jug of punch (in the 
bedroom pitcher), and we drank our love to you and Fields. Dolby 
had more than his share, under pretence of devoted enthusiasm. 
Ever affectionately yours, 

Charles Dickens. 

His readings everywhere were crowned with enthusias- 
tic success, and if his strength had been equal to his will, 
he could have stayed in America another year, and occu- 
pied every night of it with his wonderful impersonations. 
I regretted extremely that he felt obliged to give up visit- 
ing the West. Invitations which greatly pleased him 
came day after day from the principal cities and towns, 
but his friends soon discovered that his health would not 
allow him to extend his travels beyond Washington. 

He sailed for home on the 19th of April, 1868, and we 
shook hands with him on the deck of the Russia as the 
good ship turned her prow toward England. He was in 
great spirits at the thought of so soon again seeing Gad's 
Hill, and the prospect of a rest after all his toilsome days 
and nights in America. While at sea he wrote the fol- 
lowing letter to me : — 

Aboard the Russia, bound for Liverpool, Sunday, 26th April, 1868. 
My dear Fields : In order that you may have the earliest intelli- 
gence of me, I begin this note to-day in my small cabin, purposing 
(if it should prove practicable) to post it at Queenstown for the re- 
turn steamer. 



i86 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

We are abeady past the Banks of Newfoundland, although our 
course was seventy miles to the south, with the view of avoiding 
ice seen by Judkins in the Scotia on his passage out to New York, 
The Russia is a magnificent ship, and has dashed along bravely. We 
had made more than thirteen hundred and odd miles at noon to-day. 
The wind, after being a little capricious, rather threatens at the 
present time to turn against us, but our run is already eighty miles 
ahead of the Russia's last run in this direction, — a very fast one. 
.... To all whom it may concern, report the Russia in the highest 
terms. She rolls more easily than the other Cunard Screws, is kept 
in perfect order, and is most carefully looked after in all depart- 
ments. We have had nothing approaching to heavy weather ; still, 
one can speak to the trim of the ship. Her captain, a gentleman ; 
bright, polite, good-natured, and vigilant 

As to me, I am greatly better, I hope. I have got on my right 
boot to-day for the first time ; the " true American " seems to be 
turning faithless at last; and I made a Gad's HUl breakfast this 
morning, as a further advance on having otherwise eaten and drunk 
all day ever since Wednesday. 

You will see Anthony TroUope, I dare say. What was my 
amazement to see him with these eyes come aboard in the mail 
tender just before we started ! He had come out in the Scotia 
just in time to dash off again in said tender to shake hands with 
me, knowing me to be aboard here. It was most heartily done. 
He is on a special mission of convention with the United States 
post-office. 

We have been picturing your movements, and have duly checked 
off your journey home, and have talked about you continually. 
But I have thought about you both, even much, much more. You 
will never know how I love you both ; or what you have been to 
me in America, and will always be to me everywhere ; or how 
fervently I thank you. 

All the working of the ship seems to be done on my forehead. 

It is scrubbed and holystoned (my head — not the deck) at three 

every morning. It is scraped and swabbed all day. Eight pairs 

of heavy boots are now clattering on it, getting the ship under sail 

again. Legions of ropes'-ends are flopped upon it as I write, and 

I must leave off with Dolby's love. 

Thursday, 30th. 

Soon after I left off as above we had a gale of wind, which blew 

all night. For a ffew hours on the evening side of midnight there 

was no getting from this cabin of mine to the saloon, or vice versa. 



DICKENS. 187 

go heavily did the sea break over the deckg. The ship, hovrever, 
made nothing of it, and we vyere all right again by Monday after- 
noon. Except for a few hours yesterday (when we had a very 
light head wind), the weather has been constantly favorable, and 
we are now bowling away at a great rate, with a fresh breeze fill- 
ing all our sails. We expect to be at Queenstown between mid- 
night and three in the morning. 

I hope, my dear Fields, you may find this legible, but I rather 
doubt it ; for there is motion enough on the ship to render writing 
to a landsman, however accustomed to pen and ink, rather a diffi- 
cult achievement. Besides which, I slide away gracefully from the 
paper, whenever I want to be particularly expressive 

, sitting opposite to me at breakfast, always has the following 

items : A large dish of porridge, into which he casts slices of butter 
and a quantity of sugar. Two cups of tea. A steak. Irish stew. 
Chutnee, and marmalade. Another deputation of two has sohcited 
a reading to-night. Illustrious noveUst has unconditionally and ab- 
solutely declined. 

More love, and more to that, from your ever affectionate friend, 

C. D. 

His first letter from home gave us all great pleasure, 
for it announced his complete recovery from the severe 
influenza that had fastened itself upon him so many 
months before. Among his earliest notes I find these 
paragraphs : — 

" I have found it so extremely difficult to write about America 
(though never so briefly) without appearing to blow trumpets on 
the one hand, or to be inconsistent with my avowed determination 
not to write about it on the other, that I have taken the simple 
course enclosed. The number will be published on the 6th of June. 
It appears to me to be the most modest and manly course, and to 
derive some graceful significance from its title 

" Thank my dear for me for her delightfiil letter received on 

the 16th. I will write to her very soon, and tell her about the 
dogs. I would write by this post, but that Wills's absence (in Sus- 
sex, and getting no better there as yet) so overwhelms me with 
business that I can scarcely get through it. 

" Miss me ? Ah, my dear fellow, but how do I miss you I We 
talk about you both at G-ad's Hill every day of our lives. And I 
never see the place looking very pretty indeed, or hear the birds 



s88 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Bing all day long and the nightingales all night, without restlessly 
wishing that you were both there. 

" With best love, and truest and most enduring regard, ever, my 
dear Fields, 

" Your most aflfectionate, 

" C. D." 

" .... I hope you will receive by Saturday's Cunard a case con- 
taining : 

" 1. A trifling supply of the pen-knibs that suited your hand. 

" 2. A do. of unfaiUng medicine for cockroaches. 

" 3. Mrs. Gamp, for . 

" The case is addressed to you at Bleecker Street, New York. 
If it should be delayed for the knibs (or nibs) promised to-morrow, 
and should be too late for the Cunard packet, it wiU in that case 
come by the next following Inman steamer. 

" Everything here looks lovely, and I find it (you will be sur- 
prised to hear) really a pretty place ! I have seen No Thorough- 
fare twice. Excellent things in it ; but it drags, to my thinking. 
It is, however, a great success in the country, and is now getting up 
with great force in Paris. Fechter is ill, and was ordered off to 
Brighton yesterday. Wills is ill too, and banished into Sussex for 
perfect rest. Otherwise, thank God, I find everything well and 

thriving. You and my dear Mrs. F are constantly in my mind. 

Procter greatly better " 

On the 25th of May he sent off the following from 
Gad's Hill: — 

My dear : As you ask me about the dogs, I begin with 

them. When I came down first, I came to Gravesend, five miles 
off. The two Newfoundland dogs coming to meet me, with the 
usual carriage and the usual driver, and beholding me coming in my 
usual dress out at the usual door, it struck me that their recollec- 
tion of my having been absent for any unusual time was at once 
cancelled. They behaved (they are both young dogs) exactly in 
their usual manner; coming behind the basket phaeton as we 
trotted along, and lifting their heads to have their ears pulled, — a 
special attention which they receive from no one else. But when 1 
drove into the stable-yard, Linda (the St. Bernard) was greatly ex- 
cited ; weeping profusely, and throwing herself on her back that 

ehe might caress my foot with her great fore-paws. M 's little 

dog too, Mrs. Bouncer, barked in the greatest agitation on being 



DICKENS. 189 

called down and asked by M , " Who is tliis ? " and tore round 

and round me, like the dog in the Faust outlines. You must know 
that all the farmers turned out on the road in their market-chaises 
to say, " Welcome home, sir ! " that aU the houses along the road 
were dressed with flags ; and that our servants, to cut out the rest, 
had dressed this house so, that every brick of it was hidden. They 

had asked M 's permission to " ring the alarm-bell (!) when 

master drove up " ; but M , having some slight idea that that 

compliment might awaken master's sense of the ludicrous, had 
recommended bell abstinence. But on Sunday, the village choir 
(which includes the bell-ringers) made amends. After some un- 
usually brief pious reflection in the crowns of their hats at the 
end of the sermon, the ringers bolted out and rang like mad until I 
got home. (There had been a conspiracy among the villagers to 
take the horse out, if I had come to our own station, and draw me 
here. M and G- had got wind of it and warned me.) 

Divers birds sing here all day, and the nightingales all night. 
The place is lovely, and in perfect order. I have put five mirrors 
in the Swiss Chalet (where I write), and they reflect and refract in 
all kinds of ways the leaves that are quivering at the windows, and 
the great fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room 
is up among the branches of the trees ; and the birds and the but- 
terflies fly in and out, and the green branches shoot in, at the open 
windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds come and go 
with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, and in- 
deed of everything that is growing for miles and miles, is most 
delicious. 

Dolby (who sends a world of messages) found his wife much 
better than he expected, and the children (wonderful to relate !) 
perfect. The little girl winds up her prayers every night with a 
special commendation to Heaven of me and the pony, — as if I 
must mount him to get there ! I dine with Dolby (I was going to 
write " him," but found it would look as if I were going to dine 
with the pony) at G-reenwich this very day, and if your ears do not 
burn from six to nine this evening, then the Atlantic is a non-con- 
ductor. We are already settling — think of this ! — the details of 
my farewell course of readings. I am brown beyond relief, and 
cause the greatest disappointment in all quarters by looking so well. 
It is really wonderful what those fine days at sea did for me ! My 
doctor was quite broken down in spirits when he saw me, for the 
first time since my return, last Saturday, " Good Lord 1 " he said, 
recoiling, " seven years younger I " 



190 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

It is time I should explain the otherwise inexplicable enclosure. 
Will you tell Fields, with my love, (I suppose he has n't used all 
the pens yet ?) that I think there is in Tremont Street a set of my 
books, sent out by Chapman, not arrived when I departed. Such 
set of the immortal works of our illustrious, etc., is designed for the 
gentleman to whom the enclosure is addressed. If T., F., & Co. will 

kindly forward the set (carriage paid) with the enclosure to 's 

address, I will invoke new blessings on their heads, and will get 
Dolby's httle daughter to mention them nightly. 

" No Thoroughfare " is very shortly coming out in Paris, where 
it is now in active rehearsal. It is still playing here, but without 
Fechter, who has been very ill. The doctor's dismissal of him to 
Paris, however, and his getting better there, enables him to get up 
the play there. He and "Wilkie missed so many pieces of stage 
effect here, that, unless I am quite satisfied with his report, I shall 
go over and try my stage-managerial hand at the Vaudeville Thea- 
tre. I particularly want the drugging and attempted robbing in the 
bedroom scene at the Swiss inn to be done to the sound of a water- 
fall rising and falling with the wind. Although in the very open- 
ing of that scene they speak of the waterfall and listen to it, nobody 
thought of its mysterious music. I could make it, with a good 
stage carpenter, in an hour. Is it not a curious thing that they want 
to make me a governor of the Foundling Hospital, because, since 
the Christmas number, they have had such an amazing access of 
visitors and money? 

My dear love to Fields once again. Same to you and him from 

M and G . I cannot tell you both how I miss you, or how 

overjoyed I should be to see you here. 

Ever, my dear , your most affectionate friend, 

C. D. 

Excellent accounts of his health and spirits continued 
to come from Gad's Hill, and his letters were full of plans 
for the future. On the 7th of July he writes from Gad's 
Hill as usual : — 

Gad's Hill Place, Tuesday, 7th July, 1868. 

My dear Fields : I have delayed writing to you (and , to 

whom my love) until I should have seen Longfellow. When he 
was in London the first time he came and went without reporting 
himself, and left me in a state of unspeakable discomfiture. Indeed, 
I should not have believed in his having been here at all, if Mrs. 
Procter had not told me of his caUing to see Procter. However, on 



DICKENS. 191 

his return he wrote to me from the Langham Hotel, and I went up 
to town to see him, and to make an appointment for his coming 

here. He, the girls, and came down last Saturday night, and 

stayed until Monday forenoon. I showed them all the neighboring 
country that could be shown in so short a time, and they finished 
off with a tour of inspection of the kitchens, pantry, wine-cellar, 
pickles, sauces, servants' sitting-room, general household stores, and 
even the Cellar Book, of this illustrious establislmient. Forster and 
Kent (the latter wrote certain verses to Longfellow, which have 

been published in the " Times," and which I sent to D ) came 

down for a day, and I hope we all had a really " good time." I 
turned out a couple of postilions in the old red jacket of the old 
red royal Dover road, for our ride ; and it was like a holiday ride in 
England fifty years ago. Of course we went to look at the old 
houses in Rochester, and the old cathedral, and the old castle, and 
the house for the six poor travellers who, " not being rogues or 
proctors, shall have lodging, entertainment, and four pence each." 

Nothing can surpass the respect paid to Longfellow here, from 
the Queen downward. He is everywhere received and courted, 
and finds (as I told him he would, when we talked of it in Boston) 
the workingmen at least as well acquainted with his books as the 
classes socially above them 

Last Thursday I attended, as sponsor, the christening of Dolby's 
son and heir, — a most jolly baby, who held on tight by the rector's 
left whisker while the service was performed. What time, too, his 
little sister, connecting me with the pony, trotted up and down the 
centre isle, noisily driving herself as that celebrated animal, so that 
it went very hard with the sponsorial dignity. 

is not yet recovered from that concussion of the brain, and I 

have all his work to do. This may account for my not being able 
to devise a Christmas number, but I seem to have left my invention 
in America. In case you should find it, please send it over. I am 
going up to town to-day to dine with Longfellow. And now, my 
dear Fields, you know all about me and mine. 

You are enjoying your holiday ? and are still thinking sometimes 
of our Boston days, as I do ? and are maturing schemes for coming 
here next summer ? A satisfactory reply to the last question is par- 
ticularly entreated. 

I am delighted to find you both so well pleased with the Blind 
Book scheme. I said nothing of it to you when we were together, 
though I had made up my mind, because I wanted to come upon 
you with that httle burst from a distance. It seemed something 



192 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

like meeting again when I remitted the money and tliouglit of your 
talking of it. 

The dryness of the weather is amazing. All the ponds and sur- 
face weUs about here are waterless, and the poor people suffer 
greatly. The people of this village have only one spring to resort 
to, and it is a couple of miles from many cottages. I do not let the 
great dogs swim in the canal, because the people have to drink of 
it. But when they get into the Medway, it is hard to get them out 
again. The other day Bumble (the son, Newfoundland dog) got 
iuto difficulties among some floating timber, and became frightened. 
Don (the father) was standing by me, shaking off the wet and look- 
ing on carelessly, when all of a sudden he perceived something 
amiss, and went in with a bound and brought Bumble out by 
the ear. The scientific way in which he towed him along was 
charming. 

Ever your loving 

CD. 



During the summer of 1868 constant messages and let- 
ters came from Dickens across the seas, containing pleas- 
ant references to his visit in America, and giving charming 
accounts of his way of life at home. Here is a letter 
announcing the fact that he had decided to close forever 
his appearance in the reading-desk : — 

LiVEEPOOL, Friday, October 30, 1868. 

My dear : I ought to have written to you long ago. But 

I have begun my one hundred and third Farewell Readings, and 
have been so busy and so fatigued that my hands have been quite 
full. Here are Dolby and I again leading the kind of life that you 
know so well. We stop next week (except in London) for the 
month of November, on account of tlie elections, and then go on 
again, with a short holiday at Christmas. We have been doing 
wonders, and the crowds that pour in upon us in London are be- 
yond all precedent or means of providing for. I have serious 
thoughts of doing the murder from Oliver Twist ; but it is so hor- 
rible, that I am going to try it on a dozen people in my London 
hall one night next month, privately, and see what effect it makes. 

My reason for abandoning tlie Christmas number was, that I be- 
came weary of having my own writing swamped by that of other 
people. This reminds me of the Ghost story. I don't think so well 




OO Qaa/v^ Vf . c^^Qtva^xdJ^^ 



jJiX-^^^J 



DICKENS. 193 

of it, my dear Fields, as you do. It seems to me to be too obvi- 
ously founded on Bill Jones (in Monk Lewis's Tales of Terror), and 
there is also a remembrance in it of another Sea-Ghost story en- 
titled, I think, " Stand from Under," and written by I don't know 
whom. Stand from under is the cry from aloft when anything is 
going to be sent down on deck, and the ghost is aloft on a 

yard 

You know aU about public affairs, Irish churches, and party 
squabbles. A vast amount of electioneering is going on about 
here ; but it has not hurt us ; though Gladstone has been making 

speeches, north, east, south, and west of us. I hear that C 

is on his way here in the Russia. Gad's Hill must be thrown 

open 

Your most affectionate 

Charles Dickens. 

We had often talked together of the addition to his 
repertoire of some scenes from " Oliver Twist," and the 
following letter explains itself : — 

QusGOW, Wednesday, December 16, 1868. 

My dear : . . . . And first, as you are curious about the 

Oliver murder, I will tell you about that trial of the same at which 
you ought to have assisted. There were about a hundred people 
present in all. I have changed my stage. Besides that back 
screen which you know so well, there are two large screens of the 
same color, set off, one on either side, like the " wings " at a theatre. 
And besides those again, we have a quantity of curtains of the same 
color, with which to close in any width of room from wall to wall. 
Consequently, the figure is now completely isolated, and the slight- 
est action becomes much more important. This was used for the 
first time on the occasion. But behind the stage — the orchestra 
being very large and built for the accommodation of a numerous 
chorus — there was ready, on the level of the platform, a very long 
table, beautifully lighted, with a large staff of men ready to open 
oysters and set champagne corks flying. Directly I had done, the 
screens being whisked off by my people, there was disclosed one 
of the prettiest banquets you can imagine ; and when all the people 
came up, and the gay dresses of the ladies were lighted by those 
powerful lights of mine, the scene was exquisitely pretty ; the hall 
being newly decorated, and very elegantly ; and the whole looking 
like a great bed of flowers and diamonds. 

Now, you must know that all this company were, before the 
9 u 



194 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

wine went round unmistakably pale, and liad horror-stricken facea 
Next morning. Harness (Fields knows — Ker. William — did an 
edition of Shakespeare — old friend of the Kembles and Mrs. Sid- 
dons), writing to me about it, and saying it was " a most amazing 
and terrific thing," added, " but I am boimd to tell you that I had 
an almost irresistible impulse upon me to screain, and that, if any 
one had cried out I am certain I should have followed." He had 

no idea that on the night P , the great ladies" doctor, had taken 

me aside and said. " My dear Dickens, you may rely upon it that if 
only one woman cries out when you murder the girL tiiere wiU be 
a contagion of hysteria aU over this place." It is impossible to 
soften it without spoiling it, and you may suppose that I am rather 
anxious to discover how it goes on the oth of January ! ! ! We are 
afraid to announce it elsewhere, without knowing, except that I 
have thought it pretty safe to put it up once in Dublin. I asked 

Mrs. K , the famous actress, who was at the experiment : '" What 

do you say? Do it, or not ? " " Why, of course, do it,'" she re- 
plied. " Having got at such an eflect as that, it must be done. 
But," rolling her large black eyes very slowly, and speaking very 
distinctly, " the public have been looking out for a sensation these 
last fifty years or so, and by Heaven they have got it ! " With 
which words, and a long breath and a long stare, she became speech- 
less. Again, vou may suppose that I am a littie anxious ! I had 
previously tried it merely sitting over the fire in a chair, upon two 

ladies separately, one of whom was G . They had both said, 

'■ 0, good gracious ! if you are going to do ihat it ought to be seen; 
but it 's awiuL" So once again you may suppose I am a httls 
anxious! .... 

Not a day passes but Dolby and I talk about you both, and recall 
where we were at the corresponding time of last year. My old 
likening of Boston to Edinburgh has been constantiy revived with- 
in these last ten days. There is a certain remarkable simOarity of 
tone between the two places. The audiences are curiously alike, 
except that the Edinburgh audience has a quicker sense of humor 
and is a httle more genial. No disparagement to Boston in this, 
because I consider an Edinburarh audience perfect 

I trust my dear Eugenius, that you have recognized yourself in 
a certain Uncommercial, and also some small reference to a name 
rather dear to vou ? As an instance of how strangely something 
eomic springs up in the midst of the direst misery, look to a suc- 
ceeding Uncommercial, called '' A Small Star in the East," pubhshed 
to-day, by the by. I have described, unth exactness, the poor plaeea 



DICKENS. 195 

into which I went, and how the people behaved, and what they 
said. I was wretched, looking on ; and yet the boiler-maker and 
the poor man with the legs filled me with a sense of drollery not 
to be kept down by any pressure. 

The atmosphere of this place, compounded of mists from the 
highlands and smoke from the town factories, is crushing my eye- 
brows as I write, and it rains as it never does rain anywhere else, 
and always does rain here. It is a dreadful place, though much 
improved and possessing a deal of public spirit. Improvement is 
beginning to knock the old town of Edinburgh about, here and 
there ; but the Canongate and the most picturesque of the horrible 
courts and wynds are not to be easily spoiled, or made fit for the 
poor wretches who people them to live in. Edinburgh is so changed 
as to its notabilities, that I had the only three men left of the Wil- 
son and Jeffrey time to dine with me there, last Saturday. 

I read here to-night and to-morrow, go back to Edinburgh on Fri- 
day morning, read there on Saturday morning, and start southward 
by the mail that same night. After the great experiment of the 
5th, — that is to say, on the morning of the 6th, — we are off to 
Belfast and Dublin. On every alternate Tuesday I am due in Lon- 
don, from wheresoever I may be, to read at St. James's Hall. 

I think you will find " Fatal Zero " (by Percy Fitzgerald) a very 
curious analysis of a mind, as the story advances. A new beginner 
in A. Y. R. (Hon. Mrs. Clifford, Kinglake's sister), who wrote a 
story in the series just finished, called " The Abbot's Pool," has 
just sent me another story. I have a strong impression that, with 

care, she will step into Mrs. Gaskell's vacant place. W is no 

better, and I have work enough even in that direction. 

God bless the woman with the black mittens, for making me 
laugh so this morning I I take her to be a kind of public-spirited 
Mrs. Sparsit, and as such take her to my bosom. God bless you 
both, my dear friends, in this Christmas and New Year time, and in 
all times, seasons, and places, and send you to Gad's Hill with the 
next flowers 1 

Ever your most affectionate 

C. D. 

All who witnessed the reading of Dickens in the " OK- 
ver Twist " murder scene unite in testifying to the won- 
derful effect he produced in it. Old theatrical habitues 
have told me that, since the days of Edmund Kean and 
Cooper, no mimetic representation had been superior to it. 



196 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

I became so much interested in all I heard about it, that 
I resolved early in the year 1869 to step across the water 
(it is only a stride of three thousand miles) and see it 
done. The following is Dickens's reply to my announce- 
ment of the intended voyage : — 

A. Y. R. Oppicb, London, Monday, February 15, 1869. 

My dear Fields: Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! It is a remarkable 
instance of magnetic sympathy that before I received your joyfully 
welcomed announcement of your probable visit to England, I was 
waiting for the enclosed card to be printed, that I might send you 
a clear statement of my Readings. I felt almost convinced that 
you would arrive before the Farewells were over. What do you 
say to that f 

The final course of Four Readings in a week, mentioned in the 
enclosed card, is arranged to come off, on 

Monday, June 7th ; 

Tuesday, June 8th ; 

Thursday, June 10th; and 

Friday, June 11th : last night of all. 

We hoped to have finished in May, but cannot clear the country 
off in sufficient time. I shall probably be about the Lancashire 
towns in that month. There are to be three morning murders in 
London not yet announced, but they wiU be extra the London 
nights I send you, and will in no wise interfere with them. We 
are doing most amazingly. In the country the people usually col- 
lapse with the murder, and don't fully revive in time for the final 
piece ; in London, where they are much quicker, they are equal to 
both. It is very hard work ; but I have never for a moment lost 
voice or been unwell ; except that my foot occasionally gives me a 
twinge. We shall have in London on the 2d of March, for the 
second murder night, probably the greatest assemblage of notabili- 
ties of all sorts ever packed together. D continues steady in 

his allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, sends his kindest regard, and 
is immensely excited by the prospect of seeing you. Gad's Hill is 
all ablaze on the subject. We are having such wonderfiiUy warm 
weather that I fear we shall have a backward spring there. You '11 
excuse east-winds, won't you, if they shake tlie flowers roughly 
when you first set foot on the lawn? I have only seen it once 
since Christmas, and that was from last Saturday to Monday, when 
I went there for my birthday, and had the Forsters and Wilkie t« 



DICKENS. 197 

keep it. I had had 's letter four days before, and drank to you 

both most heartily and lovingly. 

I was with M a week or two ago. He is quite surprisingly 

infirm and aged. Could not possibly get on without his second wife 
to take care of him, which she does to perfection. I went to Chel- 
tenham expressly to do the murder for him, and we put him in the 
front row, where he sat grimly staring at me. After it was over, he 
thus delivered himself, on my laughing it off and giving him some 
wine: "No, Dickens — er — er — I will not," with sudden em- 
phasis, — " er — have it — er — put aside. In my — er — best 
times — er — you remember them, my dear boy — er — gone, gone I 
— no," — with great emphasis again, — "it comes to this — er — 
TWO Macbeths I " with extraordinary energy. After which he stood 
(with his glass in his hand and his old square jaw of its old fierce 
form) looking defiantly at Dolby as if Dolby had contradicted him ; 
and then trailed off into a weak pale likeness of himself as if his 
whole appearance had been some clever optical illusion. 

I am away to Scotland on Wednesday next, the 17th, to finish 
there. Ireland is already disposed of, and Manchester and Liver- 
pool will follow within six weeks. " Like lights in a theatre, they 
are being snuffed out fast," as Carlyle says of the guillotined in his 
Eevolution. I suppose I shall be glad when they are all snuffed 
out. Anyhow, I think so now. 

The N s have a very pretty house at Kensington. He has 

quite recovered, and is positively getting fat. I dined with them 

last Friday at F 's, having (marvellous to relate !) a spare day 

in London. The warm weather has greatly spared F 's bron- 
chitis ; but I fear that he is quite unable to bear cold, or even changes 
of temperature, and that he will suffer exceedingly if east-winds 
obtain. One would say they must at last, for it has been blowing 
a tempest from the south and southwest for weeks and weeks. 

The safe arrival of my boy's ship in Australia has been tele- 
graphed home, but I have not yet heard from him. His post will 
be due a week or so hence in London. My next boy is doing very 
well, I hope, at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Of my seafaring boy's 
luck in getting a death-vacancy of First Lieutenant, aboard a new 
ship-of-war on the South American Station, I heard from a friend, 
a captain in the Navy, when I was at Bath the other day ; though 
we have not yet heard it from himself. Bath (setting aside remem- 
brances of Roderick Random and Humphrey Clinker) looked, I 
fancied, just as if a cemetery-fiill of old people had somehow made 
a successful rise against death, carried the place by assault, and 



198 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

built a city with their gravestones ; in which they were trying to 
look alive, but with very indifferent success. 

C is no better, and no worse. M and Gr send all 

manner of loves, and have already represented to me that the red- 
jacketed post-boys must be turned out for a summer expedition to 
Canterbury, and that there must be lunches among the cornfields, 
walks in Cobham Park, and a thousand other expeditions. Pray 
give our pretty M to understand that a great deal wiU be ex- 
pected of her, and that she will have to look her very best, to look 
as I have drawn her. If your Irish people turn up at Gad's at the 
same time, as they probably will, they shall be entertained in the 
yard, with muzzled dogs. I foresee that they will come over, hay- 
making and hopping, and will recognize their beautiful vagabonds 
at a glance. 

I wish Reverdy Johnson would dine in private and hold his 

tongue. He overdoes the thing. C is trying to get the Pope 

to subscribe, and to run over to take the chair at his next dinner, on 

which occasion Victor Emmanuel is to propose C 's health, and 

may all differences among friends be referred to him. With much 
love always, and in high rapture at the thought of seeing you 
both here, 

Ever your most affectionate 

C. D. 

A few weeks later, while on his reading tour, he sent 
off the following : — 

AoEifHi Hotel, Liverpool, Friday, April 9, 1869. 

My dear Fields : The faithful Russia will bring this out to you, 
as a sort of warrant to take you into loving custody and bring you 
back on her return trip. 

I have been " reading " here all this week, and finish here for 
good to-night. To-morrow the Mayor, Corporation, and citizens 
give me a farewell dinner in St. George's Hall. Six hundred and 
fifty are to dine, and a mighty show of beauty is to be mustered 
besides. N had a great desire to see the sight, and so I sug- 
gested him as a fi-iend to be invited. He is over at Manchester now 
on a visit, and will come here at midday to-morrow, and go back to 
London with us on Sunday afternoon. On Tuesday I read in Lon- 
don, and on Wednesday start off" again. To-night is No. 68 out of 
one hundred. I am very tired of it, but I could have no such good 
fillip as you among the audience, and that will carry me on gayly 
to the end. So please to look sharp in the matter of landing on the 
bosom of the used-up, worn-out, and rotten old Parient. 



DICKENS. 199 

I rather think that when the 12th of June shall have shaken off 
these shackles, there will be borage on the lawn at Gad's. Your 
heart's desire in that matter, and in the minor particulars of Cob- 
ham Park, Rochester Castle, and Canterbury shall be fulfilled, please 
GrodI The red jackets shall turn out again upon the turnpike road, 
and picnics among the cherry-orchards and hop-gardens shall be 
heard of in Kent. Then, too, shall the Uncommercial resuscitate 
(being at present nightly murdered by Mr. W. Sikes) and uplift his 
voice again. 

The chief officer of the Russia (a capital feUow) was at the Read- 
ing last night, and Dolby specially charged him with the care of 
you and yours. We shall be on the borders of Wales, and probably 
about Hereford, when you arrive. Dolby has insane projects of 
getting over here to meet you ; so amiably hopeful and obviously 
impracticable, that I encourage him to the utmost. The regular 
little captain of the Russia, Cook, is just now changed into the 
Cuba, whence arise disputes of seniority, etc. I wish he had been 
with you, for I liked him very much when 1 was his passenger. I 
like to think of your being in my ship ! 

and have been taking it by turns to be '' on the point 

of death," and have been comphmenting one another greatly on the 
fineness of the point attained. My people got a very good impres- 
sion of , and thought her a sincere and earnest httle woman. 

The Russia hauls out into the stream to-day, and I fear her people 
may be too busy to come to us to-night. But if any of them do, 
they shall have the warmest of welcomes for your sake. (By the 
by, a very good party of seamen from the Queen's ship Donegal, 
lying in the Mersey, have been told off to decorate St. Greorge's 
Hall with the ship's bunting. They were all hanging on aloft up- 
side down, holding to the gigantically high roof by nothing, this 
morning, in the most wonderfully cheerful manner.) 

My son Charley has come for the dinner, and Chappell (my Pro- 
prietor, as — isn't it Wemmick? — says) is coming to-day, and 
Lord Dufferin (Mrs. Norton's nephew) is to come and make Uie 
speech. I don't envy the feelings of my noble friend when he sees 
the hall. Seriously, it is less adapted to speaking than Westminster 
Abbey, and is as large 

I hope you will see Fechter in a really clever piece by Wilkie. 
Also you will see the Academy Exhibition, which will be a very 
good one ; and also we will, please G-od, see everything and more, 
and everything else after that. I begin to doubt and fear on the 
subject of your having a horror of me after seeing the murder. I 



200 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

don't think a hand moved while I was doing it last night, or an eye 
looked away. And there was a fixed expression of horror of me, 
all over the theatre, which could not have been surpassed if I had 
been going to be hanged to that red velvet table. It is quite a new 
sensation to be execrated with that unanimity; and I hope it will 
remain so ! 

[Is it lawful — would that woman in the black gaiters, green veil, 
and spectacles, hold it so — to send my love to the pretty M ?] 

Pack up, my dear Fields, and be quick. 

Ever your most affectionate 

CD. 

It will be remembered that Dickens broke down en- 
tirely during the month of April, being completely worn 
out with hard work in the Eeadings. He described to 
me with graphic earnestness, when we met in May, all 
the incidents connected with the final crisis, and I shall 
never forget how he imitated himself during that last 
Eeading, when he nearly fell before the audience. It was 
a terrible blow to his constitution, and only a man of the 
greatest strength and will could have survived it. When 
we arrived in Queenstown, this note was sent on board 
our steamer. 

Loving welcome to England. Hurrah I 

Office of All the Year RotSD, Wednesday, May 5, 1869. 

My dear : I fear you will have been uneasy about me, and 

will have heard distorted accounts of the stoppage of my Readings. 
It is a measure of precaution, and not of cure. I was too tired and 
too jarred by the railway fast express, travelling night and day. 
No half-measure could be taken ; and rest being medically considered 
essential, we stopped. I became, thank God, myself again, almost 
as soon as I could rest! I am good for all country pleasures with 
you, and am looking forward to G-ad's, Rochester Castle, Cobham 
Park, red jackets, and Canterbury. When you come to London 
we shall probably be staying at our hotel. You will learn, here, 
where to find us. I yearn to be with you both again 1 

Love to M . 

Ever your affectionate C. D. 

I hope this will be put into your hands on board, in Queenstown 
Harbor. 



DICKENS. 201 

We met in London a few days after this, and I found 
him in capital spirits, with such a protracted list of things 
we were to do together, that, had I followed out the pre- 
scribed programme, it would have taken many more 
months of absence from home than I had proposed to 
myself. We began our long rambles among the thor- 
oughfares that had undergone important changes since I 
was last in London, taking in the noble Thames embank- 
ments, which I had never seen, and the improvements in 
the city markets. Dickens had moved up to London for 
the purpose of showing us about, and had taken rooms 
only a few streets off from our hotel. Here are two 
specimens of the welcome httle notes which I constantly 
found on my breakfast-table : — 

OrncE OP All the Year Round, London, Wednesday, May 19, 1869. 

My dear Fields : Suppose we give the weather a longer chance, 
and say Monday instead of Friday. I think we must be safer with 
that precaution. If Monday will suit you, I propose that we meet 
here that day, — your ladies and you and I, — and cast ourselves on 
the stony-hearted streets. If it be bright for St. Paul's, good ; if 
not, we can take some other lion that roars in dull weather. "We 
will dine here at six, and meet here at half past two. So if you 
should want to go elsewhere after dinner, it can be done, notwith- 
standing. Let me know in a line what you say. 

the delight of a cold bath this morning, after those lodging- 
houses ! And a mild sniffler of punch, on getting into the hotel 
last night, I found what my friend Mr. Wegg calls, " Mellering, sir, 
very mellering." 

With kindest regards, ever aflFectionately, 

Charles Dickens. 

Office of All the Ykab Round, London, Tuesday, May 25, 1869. 
My dear Fields: First, you leave Charing Cross Station, by 
North Kent railway, on Wednesday, June 2d, at 2.10 for Higham 
Station, the next station beyond Gravesend. Now, bring your 
lofty mind back to the previous Saturday, next Saturday. There is 
only one way of combining Windsor and Richmond. That way 
will leave us but two hours and a half at Windsor. This would not 
be long enough to enable us to see the inside of the castle, but 
9* 



202 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

would admit of our seeing the outside, the Long Walk, etc. I will 
assume that such a survey will suffice. That taken for granted, 
meet me at Waterloo Terminus (Loop Line for Windsor) at 10.35, 
on Saturday morning. 

The rendezvous for Monday evening will be here at half past eight. 
As I don't know Mr. Eytinge's number in Guildford Street, will 
you kindly undertake to let him know that we are going out with 
the great Detective ? And will you also give him the time and 
place for Gad's ? 

I shall be here on Friday for a few hours ; meantime at Gad's 
aforesaid. 

With love to the ladies, ever faithfully, 

C. D. 

During my stay in England in that summer of 1869, 1 
made many excursions with Dickens both around the city 
and into the country. Among the most memorable of 
these London rambles was a visit to the General Post- 
Office, by arrangement with the authorities there, a stroll 
among the cheap theatres and lodging-houses for the poor, 
a visit to Furnival's Inn and the very room in it where 
" Pickwick " was written, and a walk through the thieves' 
quarter. Two of these expeditions were made on two 
consecutive nights, under the protection of police detailed 
for the service. On one of these nights we also visited 
the lock-up houses, watch-houses, and opium-eating estab- 
lishments. It was in one of the horrid opium-dens that 
he gathered the incidents which he has related in the 
opening pages of " Edwin Drood." In a miserable court 
we found the haggard old woman blowing at a kind of 
pipe made of an old penny ink-bottle. The identical 
words which Dickens puts into the mouth of this wretched 
creature in " Edwin Drood " we heard her croon as we 
leaned over the tattered bed on which she was lying. 
There was something hideous in the way this woman 
kept repeating, " Ye '11 pay up according, deary, won't 
ye ? " and the Chinamen and Lascars made never-to-be- 



DICKENS. 203 

forgotten pictures in the scene. I watched Dickens in- 
tently as he went among these outcasts of London, and 
saw with what deep sympathy he encountered the sad 
and suffering in their horrid abodes. At the door of one 
of the penny lodging-houses (it was growing toward 
morning, and the raw air almost cut one to the bone), I 
saw him snatch a little child out of its poor drunken 
mother's arms, and bear it in, filthy as it was, that it 
might be warmed and cared for. I noticed that when- 
ever he entered one of these wretched rooms he had a 
word of cheer for its inmates, and that when he left the 
apartment he always had a pleasant " Good night " or 
" God bless you " to bestow upon them. I do not think 
his person was ever recognized in any of these haunts, 
except in one instance. As we entered a low room in the 
worst alley we had yet visited, in which were huddled to- 
gether some forty or fifty half-starved-looking wretches, 
I noticed a man among the crowd whispering to another 
and pointing out Dickens. Both men regarded him with 
marked interest all the time he remained in the room, 
and tried to get as near him, without observation, as pos- 
sible. As he turned to go out, one of these men pressed 
forward and said, " Good night, sir," with much feeling, 
in reply to Dickens's parting word. 

Among other places, we went, a little past midnight, 
into one of the Casual Wards, which were so graphically 
described, some years ago, in an English magazine, by 
a gentleman who, as a pretended tramp, went in on a 
reporting expedition. We walked through an avenue 
of poor tired sleeping forms, all lying flat on the floor, 
and not one of them raised a head to look at us as we 
moved thoughtfully up the aisle of sorrowful humanity. 
I think we counted sixty or seventy prostrate beings, 
who had come in for a night's shelter, and had lain down 
worn out with fatigue and hunger. There was one pale 



204 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

young face to wMch I "^Mspered Dickens's attention, and 
he stood over it with a look of sympathizing interest not 
to be easily forgotten. There was much ghastly comi- 
cality mingled with the horror in several of the places we 
visited on those two nights. "VVe were standing in a rooia 
half filled with people of both sexes, whom the police 
accompanying us knew to be thieves. Many of these 
abandoned persons had served out their t^rms in jail or 
prison, and would probably be again sentenced under the 
law. They were aU silent and sullen as we entered the 
room, until an old woman spoke up with a strong, beery 
voice : " Good evening, gentlemen. We are all wery poor, 
but strictly honest." At which cheerful apocryphal state- 
ment, aU the inmates of the room burst into boisterous 
laughter, and began pelting the imaginative female with 
epithets uncomplimentary and unsavory. Dickens's quick 
eye never for a moment ceased to study all these scenes 
of vice and gloom, and he told me afterwards that, bad as 
the whole thing was, it had improved infinitely since he 
first began to study character in those regions of crime 
and woe. 

Between eleven and twelve o'clock on one of the even- 
ings I have mentioned we were taken by Dickens's fa- 
vorite Detective W into a sort of lock-up house, 

where persons are brought from the streets who have 
been engaged in brawls, or detected in the act of thiev- 
ing, or who have, in short, committed any offence against 
the laws. Here they are examined for commitment by a 
sort of presiding officer, who sits all night for that pur- 
pose. AVe looked into some of the ceUs, and found them 
nearly filled with wretched-looking objects who had been 
brought in that night. To this establishment are also 
brought lost children who are picked up in the streets by 
the police, — children who have wandered away from 
their homes, and are not old enough to tell the magistrate 



DICKENS. 205 

where tliey live. It was well on toward morning, and 
we were sitting in conversation with one of the officers, 
when the ponderous door opened and one of these small 
wanderers was brought in. She was the queerest little 
figure I ever beheld, and she walked in, holding the po- 
lice officer by the hand as solemnly and as quietly if she 
were attending her own obsequies. She was between four 
and five years old, and had on what was evidently her 
mother's bonnet, — an enormous production, resembling a 
sort of coal-scuttle, manufactured after the fashion of ten 
or fifteen years ago. The child had, no doubt, caught up 
this wonderful head-gear in the absence of her parent, 
and had gone forth in quest of adventure. The officer 
reported that he had discovered her in the middle of the 
street, moving ponderingly along, without any regard to 
the horses and vehicles all about her. When asked where 
she lived, she mentioned a street which only existed in 
her own imagination, and she knew only her Christian 
name. When she was interrogated by the proper author- 
ities, without the slightest apparent discomposure she 
replied in a steady voice, as she thought proper, to their 
questions. The magistrate inadvertently repeated a ques- 
tion as to the number of her brothers and sisters, and the 
child snapped out, "I told ye wunst; can't ye hear?" 
When asked if she would like anything, she gayly an- 
swered, " Candy, cake and candy." A messenger was 
sent out to procure these commodities, which she in- 
stantly seized on their arrival and began to devour. She 
showed no signs of fear, until one of the officers untied 
the huge bonnet and took it off, when she tearfuUy in- 
sisted upon being put into it again. I was greatly im- 
pressed by the ingenious effijrts of the excellent men in 
the room to learn from the child where she lived, and 
who her parents were. Dickens sat looking at the little 
figure with profound interest, and soon came forward and 



2o6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

asked permission to speak with the child. Of course his 
request was granted, and I don't know when I have en- 
joyed a conversation more. She made some very smart 
answers, which convulsed us all with laughter as we stood 
looking on ; and the creator of " little Nell " and " Paul 
Dombey " gave her up in despair. He was so much inter- 
ested in the little vagrant, that he sent a messenger next 
morning to learn if the rightful owner of the bonnet had 
been found. Eeport came back, on a duly printed form, 
setting forth that the anxious father and mother had ap- 
plied for the child at three o'clock in the morning, and 
had borne her away in triumph to her home. 

It was a warm summer afternoon towards the close of 
the day, when Dickens went with us to visit the Lon- 
don Post-Office. He said : " I know nothing which could 
give a stranger a better idea of the size of London than 
that great institution. The hurry and rush of letters ! 
men up to their chin in letters ! nothing but letters 
everywhere ! the air fuU of letters ! — suddenly the clock 
strikes ; not a person is to be seen, nor a letter : only one 
man with a lantern peering about and putting one drop- 
letter into a box." For two hours we went from room 
to room, with him as our guide, up stairs and down stairs, 
observing the myriad clerks at their various avocations, 
with letters for the North Pole, for the South Pole, for 
Egypt and Alaska, Darien and the next street. 

The " Blind Man," as he was called, appeared to afford 
Dickens as much amusement as if he saw his work then 
for the first time ; but this was one of the quahties of his 
genius ; there was inexhaustibility and freshness in every- 
thing to which he turned his attention. The ingenuity 
and loving care shown by the " Blind Man " in decipher- 
ing or guessing at the apparently inexplicable addresses 
on letters and parcels excited his admiration. " What a 



DICKENS. 207 

lesson to all of us," he could not help saying, " to be care- 
ful in preparing our letters for the mail ! " His own 
were always directed with such exquisite care, however, 
that had he been brother to the " Blind Man," and con- 
sidered it his special work in life to teach others how 
to save that officer trouble, he could hardly have done 
better. 

Leaving the hurry and bustle of the Post-Of&ce behind 
us, we strolled out into the streets of London. It was 
past eight o'clock, but the beauty of the soft June sunset 
was only then overspreading the misty heavens. Every 
sound of trafl&c had died out of those turbulent thorough- 
fares; now and then a belated figure would hurry past 
us and disappear, or perhaps in turning the corner would 
linger to " take a good look " at Charles Dickens. But 
even these stragglers soon dispersed, leaving us alone in 
the hght of day and the sweet living air to heighten the 
sensation of a dream. We came through White Friars 
to the Temple, and thence into the Temple Garden, where 
our very voices echoed. Dickens pointed up to Talfourd's 
room, and recalled with tenderness the merry hours they 
had passed together in the old place. Of course we 
hunted out Goldsmith's abode, and Dr. Johnson's, saw the 
site of the Earl of Essex's palace, and the steps by which 
he was wont to descend to the river, now so far removed. 
But most interesting of all to us there was " Pip's " room, 
to which Dickens led us, and the staircase where the con- 
vict stumbled up in the dark, and the chimney nearest 
the river where, although less exposed than in " Pip's " 
days, we could well understand how " the wind shook the 
house that night like discharges of cannon, or breakings 
of a sea." We looked in at the dark old staircase, so dark 
on that night when " the lamps were blown out, and the 
lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering," 
and then went on to take a peep, haK shuddering our- 



2o8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

selves, at the narrow street where " Pip " by and by found 
a lodging for the convict. Nothing dark could long sur- 
vive in our minds on that June night, when the whole 
scene was so like the airy work of imagination. Past 
the Temple, past the garden to the river, mistily fair, with 
a few boats moving upon its surface, the convict's story 
was forgotten, and we only knew this was Dickens's home, 
where he had lived and written, lying in the calm light 
of its fairest mood. 



Dickens had timed our visit to his country house in 
Kent, and arranged that we should appear at Gad's Hill 
with the nightingales. Arriving at the Higham station 
on a bright June day in 1869, we found his stout little 
pony ready to take us up the hill ; and before we had 
proceeded far on the road, the master himseK came out 
to welcome us on the way. He looked brown and hearty, 
and told us he had passed a breezy morning writing in 
the chalet. We had parted from him only a few days be- 
fore in London, but I thought the country air had already 
begun to exert its strengthening influence, — a process he 
said which commonly set in the moment he reached his 
garden gate. 

It was ten years since I had seen Gad's HiU Place, and 
I observed at once what extensive improvements had 
been made during that period. Dickens had increased 
his estate by adding quite a large tract of land on the op- 
posite side of the road, and a beautiful meadow at the 
back of the house. He had connected the front lawn, by 
a passageway running under the road, with beautifully 
wooded grounds, on which was erected the Swiss chalet^ 
a present from Fechter. The old house, too, had been 
greatly improved, and there was an air of assured com- 
fort and ease about the charming establishment. No one 



DICKENS. 209 

could surpass Dickens as a host ; and as there were cer- 
tain household rules (hours for meals, recreation, etc.), h© 
at once announced them, so that visitors never lost any 
time " wondering " when this or that was to happen. 

Lunch over, we were taken round to see the dogs, and 
Dickens gave us a rapid biograpliical account of each as 
we made acquaintance with the whole colony. One old 
fellow, who had grown superannuated and nearly blind, 
raised himself up and laid his great black head against 
Dickens's breast as if he loved him. All were spoken 
to with pleasant words of greeting, and the whole troop 
seemed wild with joy over the master's visit. " Linda " 
put up her shaggy paw to be shaken at parting ; and as 
we left the dog-houses, our host told us some amusing 
anecdotes of his favorite friends. 

Dickens's admiration of Hogarth was unbounded, and 
he had hung the staircase leading up from the hall of 
his house with fine old impressions of the great master's 
best works. Observing our immediate interest in these 
pictures, he seemed greatly pleased, and proceeded at once 
to point out in his graphic way what had struck his own 
fancy most in Hogarth's genius. He had made a study 
of the painter's thought as displayed in these works, and 
his talk about the artist was delightful. He used to say 
he never came down the stairs without pausing with new 
wonder over the fertility of the mind that had conceived 
and the hand that had executed these powerful pictures 
of human life ; and I cannot forget with what fervid 
energy and feeling he repeated one day, as we were stand- 
ing together on the stairs in front of the Hogarth pic- 
tures. Dr. Johnson's epitaph, on the painter : — 

" The hand of him here torpid lies, 

That drew the essential form of grace ; 
Here closed in death the attentive eyes 
That saw the manners in the face." 



2IO , YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Every day we had out-of-door games, such as " Bowls," 
" Aunt Sally," and the like, Dickens leading off with 
great spirit and fun. Billiards came after dinner, and 
during the evening we had charades and dancing. There 
was no end to the new divertisements our kind host was 
in the habit of proposing, so that constant cheerfulness 
reigned at Gad's Hill. He went into his work-room, as 
he called it, soon after breakfast, and wrote till twelve 
o'clock ; then he came out, ready for a long walk. The coun- 
try about Gad's Hill is admirably adapted for pedestrian 
exercise, and we went forth every day, rain or shine, for a 
stretcher. Twelve, fifteen, even twenty miles were not 
too much for Dickens, and many a long tramp we have 
had over the hop-country together. Chatham, Eochester, 
Cobham Park, Maidstone, — anjrwhere, out under the 
open sky and into the free air ! Then Dickens was at 
his best, and talked. Swinging his blackthorn stick, his 
lithe figure sprang forward over the ground, and it took a 
practised pair of legs to keep alongside of his voice. In 
these expeditions I heard from his own lips delightful 
reminiscences of his early days in the region we were 
then traversing, and charming narratives of incidents 
connected with the writing of his books. 

Dickens's association with Gad's Hill, the city of 
Eochester, the road to Canterbury, and the old cathedral 
town itself, dates back to his earliest years. In " David 
Copperfield," the most autobiographic of all his books, we 
find him, a little boy, (so smaU, that the landlady is called 
to peer over the counter and catch a glimpse of the tiny 
lad who possesses such " a spirit,") trudging over the old 
Kent Eoad to Dover. "I see myself," he writes, "as 
evening closes in, coming over the bridge at Eochester, 
footsore and tired, and eating bread that I had bought for 
supper. One or two little houses, with the notice, ' Lodg- 
ings for Travellers,' hanging out, had tempted me ; but I 



DICKENS. 211 

was afraid of spending the few pence I had, and was 
even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I 
had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, but 
the sky; and toiling into Chatham, — which in that 
night's aspect is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, 
and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah's 
arks, — crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery 
overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and 
fro. Here I lay down near a cannon ; and, liappy in the 
society of the sentry's footsteps, though he knew no more 
of my being above him than the boys at Salem House 
had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until 
morning." Thus early he noticed " the trampers " which 
infest the old Dover Eoad, and observed them in their 
numberless gypsy-like variety ; thus early he looked 
lovingly on Gad's Hill Place, and wished it might be his 
own, if he ever grew up to be a man. His earliest mem- 
ories were filled with pictures of the endless hop-grounds 
and orchards, and the little child " thought it all extremely 
beautiful ! " 

Through the long years of his short life he was always 
consistent in his love for Kent and the old surroundings. 
When the after days came and while travelling abroad, 
how vividly the childish love returned! As he passed 
rapidly over the road on his way to France he once wrote : 
" Midway between Gravesend and Eochester the widening 
river was bearing the ships, white-sailed or black-smoked, 
out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer 
small boy. 

" ' Halloa ! ' said I to the very queer small boy, ' where 
do you live ? ' 

" ' At Chatham,' says he. 

" ' What do you do there ? ' said I. 

" ' I go to school,' says he. 

" I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Pres- 



212 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

ently the very queer small boy says, ' This is Gad's Hill 
we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those 
travellers, and ran away.' 

" ' You know something about Falstaff, eh ? * said I. 

" ' All about him,' said the very queer small boy. ' I 
am old (I am nine) and I read all sorts of books. But do 
let us stop at the top of the lull, and look at the house 
there, if you please ! ' 

" ' You admire that house,' said I. 

" ' Bless you, sir,' said the very queer small boy, ' when 
I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a 
treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now I am 
nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I 
can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often 
said to me, " If you were to be very persevering and were 
to work hard, you might some day come to live in it." 
Though that 's impossible ! ' said the very queer small 
boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house 
out of window with all his might. I was rather annoyed 
to be told this by the very queer small boy ; for that 
house happens to be my house, and I have reason to 
believe that what he said was true." 

What stay-at-home is there who does not know the 
Bull Inn at Eochester, from which Mr. Tupman and Mr. 
Jingle attended the ball, Mr. Jingle wearing Mr. Winkle's 
coat ? or who has not seen in fancy the " gypsy-tramp," 
the " show-tramp," the " cheap jack," the " tramp-chil- 
dren," and the " Irish hoppers " aU passing over " the Kent- 
ish Eoad, bordered " in their favorite resting-place " on 
either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between 
the road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of grass ? 
Wild-flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies 
high and airy, with the distant river stealing steadily 
away to the ocean, like a man's life." 

Sitting in the beautiful chalet during his later years and 



DICKENS. 213 

watching this same river stealing away like his own life, he 
never could find a harsh word for the tramps, and many 
and many a one has gone over the road rejoicing because 
of some kindness received from his hands. Every precau- 
tion was taken to protect a house exposed as his was to 
these wild rovers, several dogs being kept in the stable- 
yard, and the large outer gates locked. But he seldom 
made an excursion in any direction without finding some 
opportunity to benefit them. One of these many kind- 
nesses came to the public ear during the last summer of 
his life. He was dressing in his own bedroom in the 
morning, when he saw two Savoyards and two bears come 
up to the Falstaff Inn opposite. While he was watching 
the odd company, two English bullies joined the little 
party and insisted upon taking the muzzles off the bears 
in order to have a dance with them. "At once," said 
Dickens, " I saw there would be trouble, and I watched 
the scene with the greatest anxiety. In a moment I saw 
how things were going, and without delay I found myself 
at the gate. I called the gardener by the way, but he 
managed to hold himself at safe distance behind the 
fence. I put the Savoyards instantly in a secure position, 
asked the bullies what they were at, forced them to 
muzzle the bears again, under threat of sending for the 
police, and ended the whole affair in so short a time that 
I was not missed from the house. Unfortunately, while 
I was covered with dust and blood, for the bears had 
already attacked one of the men when I arrived, I heard 
a carriage roll by. I thought nothing of it at the time, 
but the report in the foreign journals which startled and 
shocked my friends so much came probably from the 
occupants of that vehicle. Unhappily, in my desire to 
save the men, I entirely forgot the dogs, and ordered the 
bears to be carried into the stable-yard until the scuffle 
should be over, when a tremendous tumult arose between 



214 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

the bears and the dogs. Fortunately we were able to 
separate them without injury, and the whole was so soon 
over that it was hard to make the family believe, when I 
came in to breakfast, that anything of the kind had gone 
forward." It was the newspaper report, causing anxiety 
to some absent friends, which led, on inquiry, to this re- 
hearsal of the incident. 

"Who does not know Cobham Park ? Has Dickens not 
invited us there in the old days to meet Mr. Pickwick, 
who pronounced it " delightful ! — thoroughly delightful," 
while " the skin of his expressive countenance was rap- 
idly peeling off with exposure to the sun " ? Has he 
not invited the world to enjoy the loveliness of its soli- 
tudes with him, and peopled its haunts for us again and 
again ? 

Our first real ^asit to Cobham Park was on a summer 
morning when Dickens walked out with us from his own 
gate, and, strolling quietly along the road, turned at length 
into what seemed a rural wooded pathway. At first we did 
not associate the spot in its spring freshness with that 
morning after Christmas when he had supped with the 
" Seven Poor Travellers," and lain awake all night with 
thinking of them ; and after parting in the morning with 
a kindly shake of the hand all round, started to walk 
through Cobham woods on his way towards London. 
Then on his lonely road, " the mists began to rise in the 
most beautiful manner and the sun to shine ; and as I 
went on," he writes, " through the bracing air, seeing the 
hoar frost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all nature 
shared in the joy of the great Birthday. Going through 
the woods, the softness of my tread upon the mossy 
ground and among the brown leaves enhanced the Christ- 
mas sacredness by which I felt surrounded. As the 
whitened stems environed me, I thought how the Founder 
of the time had never raised his benignant hand, save to 



DICKENS. 215 

bless and heal, except in the case of one unconscious 
tree." 

Now we found ourselves on the same ground, sur- 
rounded by the full beauty of the summer-time. The 
hand of Art conspiring with Nature had planted rhodo- 
dendrons, as if in their native soil beneath the forest- 
trees. They were in one universal flame of blossoms, as 

far as the eye could see. Lord and Lady D , the 

kindest and most hospitable of neighbors, were absent ; 
there was not a living figure beside ourselves to break the 
solitude, and we wandered on and on with the wild birds 
for companions as in our native wildernesses. By and 
by we came near Cobham Hall, with its fine lawns and 
far-sweeping landscape, and workmen and gardeners and 
a general air of summer luxury. But to-day we were to 
go past the hall and lunch on a green slope under the 
trees, (was it just the spot where Mr. Pickwick tried the 
cold punch and found it satisfactory ? I never liked to 
ask !) and after making the old woods ring with the clat- 
ter and clink of our noontide meal, mingled with floods 
of laughter, were to come to the village, and to the very 
inn from which the disconsolate Mr. Tupman wrote to 
Mr. Pickwick, after his adventure with Miss Wardle. 
There is the old sign, and here we are at the Leather Bot- 
tle, Cobham, Kent. " There 's no doubt whatever about 
that." Dickens's modesty would not allow him to go in, 
so we made the most of an outside study of the quaint old 
place as we strolled by ; also of the cottages whose in- 
mates were evidently no strangers to our party, but were 
cared for by them as English cottagers are so often looked 
after by the kindly ladies in their neighborhood. And 
there was the old churchyard, " where the dead had been 
quietly buried ' in the sure and certain hope ' which Christ- 
mas-time inspired." There too were the children, whom, 
seeing at their play, he could not but be loving, remem- 



2i6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

bering who had loved them ! One party of urchins 
swinging on a gate reminded us vividly of CoUins, the 
painter. Here was his composition to the life. Every 
lover of rural scenery must recall the little fellow on the 
top of a five-barred gate in the picture Collins painted, 
known widely by the fine engraving made of it at the 
time. And there too were the blossoming gardens, which 
now shone in their new garments of resurrection. The 
stillness of midsummer noon crept over everything as we 
lingered in the sun and shadow of the old village. Slowly 
circling the hall, we came upon an avenue of lime-trees 
leading up to a stately doorway in the distance. The 
path was overgrown, birds and squirrels were hopping 
unconcernedly over the ground, and the gates and chains 
were rusty with disuse. " This avenue," said Dickens, as 
we leaned upon the waU and looked into its cool shadows, 
" is never crossed except to bear the dead body of the lord 
of the hall to its last resting-place ; a remnant of super- 
stition, and one which Lord and Lady D would be 

glad to do away with, but the villagers would never hear 
of such a thing, and would consider it certain death to 
any person who should go or come through this entrance. 
It would be a highly unpopular movement for the present 
occupants to attempt to uproot this absurd idea, and they 
have given up all thoughts of it for the time." 

It was on a subsequent visit to Cobham village that we 
explored the " College," an old foundation of the reign of 
Edward III. for the aged poor of both sexes. Each 
occupant of the various small apartments was sitting at 
his or her door, which opened on a grassy enclosure with 
arches like an abandoned cloister of some old cathedral. 
Such a motley society, brought together under such un- 
natural circumstances, would of course interest Dickens. 
He seemed to take a profound pleasure in wandering 
about the place, which was evidently filled with the 



DICKENS. 217 

associations of former visits in his own mind. He was 
usually possessed by a childlike eagerness to go to any 
spot which he had made up his mind it was best to visit, 
and quick to come away, but he lingered long about this 
leafy old haunt on that Sunday afternoon. 

Of Cobham Hall itself much might be written without 
conveying an adequate idea of its peculiar interest to 
this generation. The terraces, and lawns, and cedar-trees, 
and deer-park, the names of Edward HI. and Elizabeth, 
the famous old Cobhams and their long line of distin- 
guished descendants, their invaluable pictures and historic 
chapel, have all been the common property of the past 
and of the present. But the air of comfort and hospitality 
diffused about the place by the present owners belongs 
exclusively to our time, and a little Swiss ch&let removed 
from Gad's Hill, standing not far from the great house, 
will always connect the name of Charles Dickens with 
the place he loved so well. The chalet has been trans- 
ferred thither as a tribute from the Dickens family to the 
kindness of their friends and former neighbors. We 
could not fail, during our visit, to think of the connection 
his name would always have with Cobham Hall, though 
he was then still by our side, and the little chalet yet re- 
mained embowered in its own green trees overlooking the 
sail-dotted Medway as it flowed towards the Thames. 

The old city of Rochester, to which we have already 
referred as being particularly well known to all Mr. Pick- 
wick's admirers, is within walking distance from Gad's 
Hill Place, and was the object of daily visits from its 
occupants. The ancient castle, one of the best ruins in 
England, as Dickens loved to say, because less has been 
done to it, rises with rugged walls precipitously from the 
river. It is wholly unrestored ; just enough care has been 
bestowed to prevent its utter destruction, but otherwise it 
stands as it has stood and crumbled from year to year 



2l8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

We climbed painfully up to the lughest steep of its loftiest 
tower, and looked down on the wonderful scene spread 
out in the glory of a summer sunset. Below, a clear 
trickling stream flowed and tinkled as it has done since 
the rope was first lowered in the year 800 to bring the 
bucket up over the worn stones which still remain to 
attest the fact. How happy Dickens was in the beauty 
of that scene ! What delight he took in rebuilding the 
old place, with every legend of which he proved himself 
familiar, and repeopling it out of the storehouse of his 
fancy. "Here was the kitchen, and there the dining- 
hall ! How frightfully dark they must have been in 
those days, with such small slits for windows, and the 
fireplaces without chimneys ! There were the galleries ; 
this is one of the four towers ; the others, you will under- 
stand, corresponded with this; and now, if you're not 
dizzy, we will come out on the battlements for the view!" 
Up we went, of course, following our cheery leader until 
we stood among the topmost wall-flowers, which were 
waving yellow and sweet in the sunset air. East and 
west, north and south, our eyes traversed the beautiful 
garden land of Kent, the land beloved of poets through 
the centuries. Below lay the city of Eochester on one 
hand, and in the heart of it an old inn where a carrier 
was even then getting out, or putting in, horses and 
wagon for the night. A procession, with banners and 
music, was moving slowly by the tavern, and the quaint 
costumes in which the men were dressed suggested days 
long past, when far other scenes were going forward in 
this locality. It was almost like a pageant marching out 
of antiquity for our delectation. Our master of cere- 
monies revelled that day in repeopling the queer old 
streets down into which we were looking from our charm- 
ing elevation. His delightful fancy seemed especially 
alert on that occasion, and we lived over again with him 



KKKP OF ROi'lIKSTl'.R CASTLK 



DICKENS. 219 

many a chapter in the history of Eochester, full of interest 
to those of us who had come from a land where all is 
new and comparatively barren of romance. 

Below, on the other side, was the river Medway, from 
whose depths the castle once rose steeply. Now the debris 
and perhaps also a slight swerving of the river from its 
old course have left a rough margin, over which it would 
not be difficult to make an ascent. Eochester Bridge, 
too, is here, and the " windy hills " in the distance ; and 
again, on the other hand, Chatham, and beyond, the 
Thames, with the sunset tingeing the many-colored sails. 
We were not easily persuaded to descend from our pic- 
turesque vantage-ground; but the master's hand led us 
gently on from point to point, until we found ourselves, be- 
fore we were aware, on the grassy slope outside the castle 
wall. Besides, there was the cathedral to be visited, and 
the tomb of Eichard Watts, " with the effigy of worthy 
Master Eichard starting out of it like a ship's figure- 
head." 

After seeing the cathedral, we went along the silent 
High Street, past queer Elizabethan houses with endless 
gables and fences and lattice-windows, until we came to 
Watts's Charity, the house of entertainment for six poor 
travellers. The establishment is so familiar to all lovers of 
Dickens through his description of it in the article enti- 
tled " Seven Poor Travellers " among his " Uncommercial" 
papers, that little is left to be said on that subject ; except 
perhaps that no autobiographic sketch ever gave a more 
faithful picture, a closer portrait, than is there conveyed. 

Dickens's fancy for Eochester, and his numberless asso- 
ciations with it, have left traces of that city in almost 
everything he wrote. From the time when Mr. Snodgrass 
first discovered the castle ruin from Eochester Bridge, to 
the last chapter of Edwin Drood, we observe hints of the 
city's quaintness or silence; the unending pavements, 



220 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

whicli go on and on till the wisest head would be puzzled 
to know where Rochester ends and where Chatham be- 
gins , the disposition of Father Time to have his own un- 
impeded way therein, and of the gray cathedral towers 
which loom up in the background of many a sketch and 
tale. Eochester, too, is on the way to Canterbury, Dick- 
ens's best loved cathedral, the home of Agnes Wickfield, 
the sunny spot in the life and memory of David Copper- 
field. David was particularly small, as we are told, when 
he first saw Canterbury, but he was already familiar with 
Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, 
Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil 
Bias, and Robinson Crusoe, who came out, as he says, a 
glorious host, to keep him company. Naturally, the calm 
old place, the green nooks, the beauty of the cathedral, 
possessed a better chance with him than with many oth- 
ers, and surely no one could have loved them more. In 
the later years of his life the crowning-point of the sum- 
mer holidays was " a pilgrimage to Canterbury." 

The sun shone merrily through the day when he chose 
to carry us thither. Early in the morning the whole 
house was astir; large hampers were packed, ladies and 
gentlemen were clad in gay midsummer attire, and, soon 
after breakfast, huge carriages with four horses, and pos- 
tilions with red coats and top-boots, after the fashion 
of the olden time, were drawn up before the door. Pres- 
ently we were moving lightly over the road, the hop- 
vines dancing on the poles on either side, the orchards 
looking invitingly cool, the oast-houses fanning with their 
wide arms, the river glowing from time to time through 
the landscape. We made such a clatter passing through 
Rochester, that all the main street turned out to see the 
carriages, and, being obliged to stop the horses a moment, 
a shopkeeper, desirous of discovering Dickens among the 
party, hit upon the wrong man, and confused an humble 



DICKENS. 221 

individual among the company by calling a crowd, point- 
ing him out as Dickens, and making him the mark of 
eager eyes. This incident seemed very odd to us in a 
place he knew so well On we clattered, leaving the 
echoing street behind us, on and on for many a mile, until 
noon, when, finding a green wood and clear stream by 
the roadside, we encamped under the shadow of the trees 
in a retired spot for lunch. Again we went on, through 
quaint towns and lonely roads, until we came to Canter- 
bury, in the yellow afternoon. The bells for service were 
ringing as we drove under the stone archway into the 
soundless streets. The whole town seemed to be enjoy- 
ing a simultaneous nap, from which it was aroused by our 
horses' hoofs. Out the people ran, at this signal, into the 
highway, and we were glad to descend at some distance 
from the centre of the city, thus leaving the excitement 
behind us. We had been exposed to the hot rays of the 
sun aU day, and the change into the shadow of the cathe- 
dral was refreshing. Service was going forward as we en- 
tered ; we sat down, therefore, and joined our voices with 
those of the choristers. Dickens, with tireless observation, 
noted how sleepy and inane were the faces of many of the 
singers, to whom this beautiful service was but a sicken- 
ing monotony of repetition. The words, too, were gab- 
bled over in a manner anything but impressive. He was 
such a downright enemy to form, as substituted for re- 
ligion, that any dash of untruth or unreality was abhor- 
rent to him. When the last sounds died away in the 
cathedral we came out again into the cloisters, and saun- 
tered a,bout until the shadows fell over the beautiful en- 
closure. We were hospitably entreated, and listened to 
many an historical tale of tomb and stone and grassy 
nook ; but under all we were listening to the heart of our 
companion, who had so often wandered thither in his soli- 
tude, and was now rereading the stories these urns had 
prepared for him. 



222 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

During one of his winter visits, lie says (in " Copper- 
field"):— 

" Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old 
streets with a sober pleasure that calmed my spirits and 
eased my heart. There were the old signs, the old names 
over the shops, the old people serving in them. It ap- 
peared so long since I had been a school-boy there, that 
I wondered the place was so little changed, until I re- 
flected how little I was changed myself. Strange to say, 
that quiet influence which was inseparable in my mind 
from Agnes seemed to pervade even the city where she 
dwelt. The venerable cathedral towers, and the old jack- 
daws and rooks, whose airy voices made them more retired 
than perfect silence would have done ; the battered gate- 
ways, once stuck full with statues, long thrown down and 
crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims who had 
gazed upon them ; the still nooks, where the ivied growth 
of centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls ; the 
ancient houses ; the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, 
and garden ; — everywhere, in everything, I felt the same 
serene air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening spirit." 

Walking away and leaving Canterbury behind us for- 
ever, we came again into the voiceless streets, past a 
" very old house bulging out over the road, .... quite 
spotless in its cleanliness, the old-fashioned brass knocker 
on the low, arched door ornamented with carved garlands 
of fruit and flowers, twinkling like a star," the very house, 
perhaps, "with angles and corners and carvings and 
mouldings," where David Copperfield was sent to school 
We were turned off with a laughing reply, when we ven- 
tured to accuse this particular house of being the one, and 
were told there were several that " would do " ; which 
was quite true, for nothing could be more quaint, more 
satisfactory to all, from the lovers of Chaucer to the lov- 
ers of Dickens, than this same city of Canterbury. The 



DICKENS. 223 

sun had set as we rattled noisily out of the ancient 
place that afternoon, and along the high road, which was 
quite novel in its evening aspect. There was no lingering 
now ; on and on we went, the postilions flying up and 
down on the backs of their huge horses, their red coats 
glancing in the occasional gleams of wayside lamps, fire- 
flies making the orchards shine, the sunset lighting up 
vast clouds that lay across the western sky, and the 
whole scene filled with evening stillness. When we 
stopped to change horses, the quiet was almost oppres- 
sive. Soon after nine we espied the welcome lantern of 
Gad's Hill Place and the open gates. And so ended 
Dickens's last pilgrimage to Canterbury. 

There was another interesting spot near Gad's Hill 
which was one of Dickens's haunts, and this was the 
"Druid-stone," as it is called, at Maidstone. This is 
within walking distance of his house, along the breezy 
hillside road, which we remember blossomy and wavy 
in the summer season, with open spaces in the hedges 
where one may look over wide hilly slopes, and at times 
come upon strange cuts down into the chalk which per- 
vades this district. We turned into a lane from the 
dusty road, and, following our leader over a barred gate, 
came into wide grassy fields full of summer's bloom and 
glory. A short walk farther brought us to the Druid- 
stone, which Dickens thought to be, from the fitness of 
its position, simply a vantage-ground chosen by priests, — 
whether Druid or Christian of course it would be impos- 
sible to say, — from which to address a multitude. The 
rock served as a kind of background and sounding-board, 
while the beautiful sloping of the sward upward from the 
speaker made it an excellent position for out-of-door dis- 
courses. On this day it was only a blooming solitude, 
where the birds had done all the talking, until we arrived. 



224 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

It was a fine afternoon haunt, and one worthy of a visits 
apart from the associations which make the place dear. 

One of the weirdest neighborhoods to Gad's Hill, and 
one of those most closely associated with Dickens, is the 
village of Cooling. A cloudy day proved well enough for 
Cooling ; indeed, was undoubtedly chosen by the adroit 
master of hospitalities as being a fitting sky to show the 
dark landscape of "Great Expectations," The pony 
carriage went thither to accompany the walking party and 
carry the baskets ; the whole. way, as we remember, leading 
on among narrow lanes, where heavy carriages were sel- 
dom seen. "We are told in the novel, " On every rail and 
gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so thick 
that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our 
village — a direction which they never accepted, for they 
never came there — was invisible to me until I was close 
under it." The lanes certainly wore that aspect of never 
being accepted as a way of travel; but this was a de- 
lightful recommendation to our walk, for summer kept 
her own way there, and grass and wild-flowers were abun- 
dant. It was already noon, and low clouds and mists 
were lying about the earth and sky as we approached a 
forlorn little village on the edge of the wide marshes de- 
scribed in the opening of the novel. Tliis was Cooling, 
and passing by the few cottages, the decayed rectory, and 
straggling buildings, we came at length to the churchyard. 
It took but a short time to make us feel at home there, 
with the marshes on one hand, the low wall over which 
Pip saw the convict climb before he dared to run away ; 
" the five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a 
half long, .... sacred to the memory of five little broth- 
ers, .... to which I had been indebted for a belief that 
they all had been born on their backs, with their hands 
in their trousers pockets, and had never taken them out 
in this state of existence " ; — aU these points, combined 



DICKENS. 225 

with the general dreariness of the landscape, the far- 
stretching marshes, and the distant sea-line, soon revealed 
to us that this was Pip's country, and we might moment- 
ly expect to see the convict's head, or to hear the clank 
of his chain, over that low waU. 

We were in the churchyard now, having left the pony 
within eye-shot, and taken the baskets along with us, and 
were standing on one of those very lozenges, somewhat 
grass-grown by this time, and deciphering the inscriptions. 
On tiptoe we could get a wide view of the marsh, with 
the wind sweeping in a lonely limitless way through the 
taU grasses. Presently hearing Dickens's cheery call, we 
turned to see what he was doing. He had chosen a 
good flat gravestone in one corner (the corner farthest from 
the marsh and Pip's little brothers and the expected con- 
vict), had spread a wide napkin thereupon after the 
fashion of a domestic dinner-table, and was rapidly trans- 
ferring the contents of the hampers to that point. The 
horrible whimsicality of trying to eat and make merry 
under these deplorable circumstances, the tragic-comic 
character of the scene, appeared to take him by surprise. 
He at once threw himself into it (as he says in " Copper- 
field" he was wont to do with anything to which he 
had laid his hand) with fantastic eagerness. Having 
spread the table after the most approved style, he sud- 
denly disappeared behind the wall for a moment, trans- 
formed himself by the aid of a towel and napkin into a 
first-class head-waiter, reappeared, laid a row of plates 
along the top of the wall, as at a bar-room or eating-house, 
again retreated to the other side with some provisions, 
and, making the gentlemen of the party stand up to the 
wall, went through the whole play with most entire grav- 
ity. When we had wound up with a good laugh, and were 
again seated together on the grass around the table, we 
espied two wretched figures, not the convicts this time, 
10* o 



226 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

altliougli we might have easily persuaded ourselves so, 
but only tramps gazing at us over the wall from the marsh 
side as they approached, and finally sitting down just out- 
side the churchyard gate. They looked wretchedly hun- 
gry and miserable, and Dickens said at once, starting up, 
" Come, let us offer them a glass of wine and something 
good for lunch." He was about to carry them himseK, 
when what he considered a happy thought seemed to 
strike him. " You shall carry it to them," he cried, turn- 
ing to one of the ladies ; " it will be less like a charity 
and more like a kindness if one of you should speak to 
the poor souls ! " This was so much in character for 
him, who stopped always to choose the most delicate way 
of doing a kind deed, that the memory of this little inci- 
dent remains, while much, alas ! of his wit and wisdom 
have vanished beyond the power of reproducing. We 
feasted on the satisfaction the tramps took in their lunch, 
long after our own was concluded ; and, seeing them well 
off on their road again, took up our own way to Gad's 
Hill Place. How comfortable it looked on our return; 
how beautifully the afternoon gleams of sunsliine shone 
upon the holly-trees by the porch ; how we turned away 
from the door and went into the playground, where we 
bowled on the green turf, until the tall maid in her spot- 
less cap was seen bringing the five-o'clock tea thither- 
ward ; how the dews and the setting sun warned us at 
last we must prepare for dinner ; and how Dickens played 
longer and harder than any one of the company, scorn- 
ing the idea of going in to tea at that hour, and beating 
his ball instead, quite the youngest of the company up to 
the last moment ! — all this returns with vivid distinctness 
as I write these inadequate words. 

Many days and weeks passed over after those June 
days were ended before we were to see Dickens again. 
Our meeting then was at the station in London, on our 



DICKENS. 227 

way to Gad's Hill once more. He was always early at a 
railway station, he said, if only to save hiniseK the un- 
necessary and wasteful excitement hurry commonly pro- 
duces ; and so he came to meet us with a cheery manner, 
as if care were shut up in some desk or closet he had left 
behind, and he were ready to make the day a gay one, 
whatever the sun might say to it. A small roll of manu- 
script in his hand led him soon to confess that a new story 
was already begun ; but this communication was made in 
the utmost confidence, as if to account for any otherwise 
unexplainable absences, physically or mentally, from our 
society, which might occur. But there were no gaps dur- 
ing that autumn afternoon of return to Gad's Hill. He 
told us how summer had brought him no vacation this 
year, and only two days of recreation. One of those, he 
said, was spent with his family at " Eosherville Gardens," 
" the place," as a huge advertisement informed us, " to 
spend a happy day." His curiosity with regard to all en- 
tertainments for the people, he said to us, carried him 
thither, and he seemed to have been amused and rewarded 
by his visit. The previous Sunday had found him in 
London ; he was anxious to reach Gad's Hill before the 
afternoon, but in order to accomplish this he must walk 
nine miles to a way station, which he did. Coming to 
the little village, he inquired where the station was, and, 
being shown in the wrong direction, walked calmly down 
a narrow road which did not lead there at all. " On I 
went," he said, "in the perfect sunshine, over yellow 
leaves, without even a wandering breeze to break the silence, 
when suddenly I came upon three or four antique wooden 
houses standing under trees on the borders of a lovely 
stream, and, a little farther, upon an ancient doorway to a 
grand hall, perhaps the home of some bishop of the olden 
time. The road came to an end there, and I was obliged to 
retrace my steps ; but anything more entirely peaceful and 



228 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

beautiful in its aspect on that autumnal day than this re- 
treat, forgotten by the world, I almost never saw." He was 
eager, too, to describe for our entertainment one of the 
yearly cricket-matches among the villagers at Gad's Hill 
which had just come off. Some of the toasts at the sup- 
per afterward were as old as the time of Queen Anne. 
For instance, — 

" More pigs, 
Fewer parsons " ; 

delivered with all seriousness ; a later one was, " May the 
walls of old England never be covered with French 
polish!" 

Once more we recall a morning at Gad's Hill, a soft 
white haze over everything, and the yellow sun burning 
through. The birds were siaging, and beauty and calm 
pervaded the whole scene. We strayed through Cobham 
Park and saw the lovely vistas through the autumnal 
haze ; once more we reclined in the cool chalet in the 
afternoon, and watched the vessels going and coming upon 
the ever-moving river. Suddenly all has vanished ; and 
now, neither spring nor autumn, nor flowers nor birds, nor 
dawn nor sunset, nor the ever-moving river, can be the 
same to any of us again. We have all drifted down upon 
the river of Time, and one has already sailed out into the 
illimitable ocean. 



On a pleasant Sunday morning in October, 1869, as I 
sat looking out on the beautiful landscape from my 
chamber window at Gad's Hill, a servant tapped at my 
door and gave me a summons from Dickens, written in 
his drollest manner on a sheet of paper, bidding me 
descend into his study on business of great importance. 
That day I heard from the author's lips the first chapters 



GADSHILL FROM THE REAR: DICKENS'S HOMK 



DICKENS. 229 

of " Edwin Drood " the concluding lines of which initial 
pages were then scarcely dry from the pen. The story is 
unfinished, and he who read that autumn morning with 
such vigor of voice and dramatic power is in his grave. 
This private reading took place in the little room where 
the great novelist for many years had been accustomed to 
wiite, and in the house where on a pleasant evening in 
the following June he died. The spot is one of the love- 
liest in Kent, and must always be remembered as the 
last residence of Charles Dickens. He used to declare 
his firm behef that Shakespeare was specially fond of 
Kent, and that the poet chose Gad's Hill and Rochester 
for the scenery of his plays from intimate personal knowl- 
edge of their localities. He said he had no manner of 
doubt but that one of Shakespeare's haunts was the old 
inn at Rochester, and that this conviction came forcibly 
upon him one night as he was walking that way, and dis- 
covered Charles's Wain over the chimney just as Shake- 
speare has described it, in words put into the mouth of 
the carrier in King Henry IV. There is no prettier 
place than Gad's Hill in all England for the earliest 
and latest flowers, and Dickens chose it, when he had 
arrived at the fulness of his fame and prosperity, as the 
home in which he most wished to spend the remainder 
of his days. When a boy, he would often pass the house 
with his father, and frequently said to him, " If ever I 
have a dwelling of my own. Gad's Hill Place is the house 
I mean to buy." In that beautiful retreat he had for 
many years been accustomed to welcome his friends, and 
find relaxation from the crowded life of London. On the 
lawn playing at bowls, in the Swiss summer-house charm- 
ingly shaded by green leaves, he always seemed the best 
part of summer, beautiful as the season is in the delight- 
ful region where he lived. 

There he could be most thoroughly enjoyed, for he 



23© YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

never seemed so cheerfully at home anywhere else. At 
his own table, surrounded by his family, and a few guests, 
old acquaintances from town, — among them sometimes 
Torster, Carlyle, Eeade, Collins, Layard, Maclise, Stone, Ma- 
cready, Talfourd, — he was always the choicest and live- 
liest companion. He was not what is called in society a 
professed talker, but he was something far better and rarer. 
In his own inimitable manner he would frequently 
relate to me, if prompted, stories of his youthful days, 
when he was toiling on the London Morning Chronicle, 
passing sleepless hours as a reporter on the road in a 
post-chaise, driviug day and night from point to point to 
take down the speeches of Shiel or O'Connell. He liked 
to describe the post-boys, who were accustomed to hurry 
him over the road that he might reach London in advance 
of his rival reporters, while, by the aid of a lantern, he 
was writing out for the press, as he flew over the ground, 
the words he had taken down in short-hand. Those were 
his days of severe training, when in rain and sleet and 
cold he dashed along, scarcely able to keep the blinding 
mud out of his tired eyes ; and he imputed much of his 
ability for steady hard work to his practice as a reporter, 
kept at his grinding business, and determined if possible 
to earn seven guineas a week. A large sheet was started 
at this period of his life, in which all the important 
speeches of Parliament were to be reported verbatim for 
future reference. Dickens was engaged on this gigantic 
journal. Mr. Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby) had spoken 
at great length on the condition of Ireland. It was a 
long and eloquent speech, occupying many hours in 
the delivery. Eight reporters were sent in to do the 
work. Each one was required to report three quarters of 
an hour, then to retire, write out his portion, and to be 
succeeded by the next. Young Dickens was detailed to 
lead off with the first part It also fell to his lot, w^hen 



DICKENS. , 231 

the time came round, to report the closing portions of the 
speech. On Saturday the whole was given to the press, 
and Dickens ran down to the country for a Sunday's rest. 
Sunday morning had scarcely dawned, when his father, 
who was a man of immense energy, made his appearance 
in his son's sleeping-room, Mr. Stanley was so dissatis- 
fied with what he found in print, except the beginning 
and ending of his speech (just what Dickens had re- 
ported) that he sent immediately to the olB&ce and obtained 
the sheets of those parts of the report. He there found 
the name of the reporter, which, according to custom, 
was written on the margin. Then he requested that the 
young man bearing the name of Dickens should be im- 
mediately sent for. Dickens's father, all aglow with the 
prospect of probable promotion in the office, went im- 
mediately to his son's stopping-place in the country and 
brought him back to London. In telling the story, 
Dickens said : " I remember perfectly to this day the 
aspect of the room I was shown into, and the two per- 
sons in it, Mr. Stanley and his father. Both gentlemen 
were extremely courteous to me, but I noted their evident 
surprise at the appearance of so young a man. While 
we spoke together, I had taken a seat extended to me in 
the middle of the room. Mr. Stanley told me he wished 
to go over the whole speech and have it written out by 
me, and if I were ready he would begin now. Where 
would I like to sit ? I told him I was very well where I 
was, and we could begin immediately. He tried to induce 
me to sit at a desk, but at that time in the House of 
Commons there was nothing but one's knees to write 
upon, and I had formed the habit of doing my work in 
that way. Without further pause he began and went rap- 
idly on, hour after hour, to the end, often becoming very 
much excited and frequently bringing down his hand 
with great violence upon the desk near which he stood." 



232 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

I have before me, as I write, an unpublished autograph 
letter of young Dickens, which he sent off to his employer 
in November, 1835, while he was on a reporting expedi- 
tion for the Morning Chronicle. At that early stage of 
his career he seems to have had that unfailing accuracy 
of statement so marked in after years when he became 
famous. The letter was given to me several years ago by 
one of Dickens's brother reporters. Thus it runs : — 

George and Pbucan, Newburt, Sunday Morning. 

Dear Fraser : In conjunction with The Herald we have arranged 
for a Horse Express from Marlborough to London on Tuesday 
night, to go the whole distance at the rate of thirteen miles an hour, 
for six guineas : half has been paid, but, to insure despatch, the re- 
mainder is withheld until the boy arrives at the office, when he will 
produce a paper with a copy of the agreement on one side, and an 
order for three guineas (signed by myself) on the other. Will you 
take care that it is duly honored ? A Boy from The Herald will be 
in waiting at our office for their copy ; and Lyons begs me to remind 
you most strongly that it is an indispensable part of our agreement 
that he should not be detained one instant. 

We go to Bristol to-day, and if we are equally fortunate in laying 
the chaise-horses, I hope the packet will reach town by seven. As 
all the papers have arranged to leave Bristol the moment Russell is 
down, we have determined on adopting the same plan, — one of us 
will go to Marlborough in the chaise with one Herald man, and the 
other remain at Bristol with the second Herald man to conclude the 
account for the next day. The Times has ordered a chaise and four 
the whole distance, so there is every probability of our beating them 
hollow. From all we hear, we think the Herald, relying on the 
packet reaching town early, intends publishing the report in their 
first Edition. This is however, of course, mere speculation on our 
parts, as we have no direct means of ascertaining their intention. 

I think 1 have now given you all needful information. I have 
only in conclusion to impress upon you the necessity of having al] 
the compositors ready, at a very early hour, for if Russell be down 
by half past eight, we hope to have his speech in town at six. 
Believe me (for self and Beard) very truly yours, 

Charles Dickens. 
Nov., 1835. 

Thomas Fraser, Esq., Morning Chronicle Office. 



DICKENS. 233 

No writer ever lived whose method was more exact, 
whose industry was more constant, and whose punctual- 
ity was more marked, than those of Charles Dickens. 
He never shirked labor, mental or bodily. He rarely de- 
clined, if the object were a good one, taking the chair at 
a public meeting, or accepting a charitable trust. Many 
widows and orphans of deceased literary men have for 
years been benefited by his wise trusteeship or counsel, 
and he spent a great portion of his time personally look- 
ing after the property of the poor whose interests were 
under his control. He was, as has been intimated, one 
of the most industrious of men, and marvellous stories 
are told (not by himself) of what he has accomplished in 
a given time in literary and social matters. His studies 
were all from nature and life, and his habits of observa- 
tion were untiring. If he contemplated writing " Hard 
Times," he arranged with the master of Astley's circus to 
spend many hours behind the scenes with the riders and 
among the horses ; and if the composition of the " Tale 
of Two Cities " were occupying his thoughts, he could 
banish himself to France for two years to prepare for that 
great work. Hogarth pencilled on his thumb-nail a strik- 
ing face in a crowd that he wished to preserve ; Dickens 
with his transcendent memory chronicled in his mind 
whatever of interest met his eye or reached his ear, any 
time or anywhere. Speaking of memory one day, he said 
the memory of children was prodigious ; it was a mistake 
to fancy children ever forgot anything. When he was 
delineating the character of Mrs. Pipchin, he had in his 
mind an old lodging-house keeper in an English watering- 
place where he was living with his father and mother 
when he was but two years old. After the book was 
written he sent it to his sister, who wrote back at once : 
" Good heavens ! what does this mean ? you have painted 
our lodging-house keeper, and you were but two years old 



234 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

at that time ! " Characters and incidents crowded the 
chambers of his brain, all ready for use when occasion 
required. No subject of human interest was ever indiffer- 
ent to him, and never a day went by that did not afford 
him some suggestion to be utilized in the future. 

His favorite mode of exercise was walking ; and when 
in America, scarcely a day passed, no matter what the 
weather, that he did not accomplish his eight or ten miles. 
It was on these expeditions that he liked to recount to 
the companion of his rambles stories and incidents of his 
early life ; and when he was in the mood, his fun and 
humor knew no bounds. He would then frequently dis- 
cuss the numerous characters in his delightful books, and 
would act out, on the road, dramatic situations, where 
Nickleby or Copperfield or Swiveller would play distin- 
guished parts. I remember he said, on one of these occa- 
sions, that during the composition of his first stories he 
could never entirely dismiss the characters about whom he 
happened to be writing ; that while the " Old Curiosity 
Shop " was in process of composition Little Nell followed 
him about everywhere ; that while he was writing " Oliver 
Twist " Fagin the Jew would never let him rest, even in 
his most retired moments ; that at midnight and in the 
morning, on the sea and on the land. Tiny Tim and 
Little Bob Cratchit were ever tugging at his coat-sleeve, 
as if impatient for him to get back to his desk and con- 
tinue the story of their lives. But he said after he had 
published several books, and saw what serious demands 
his characters were accustomed to make for the constant 
attention of his already overtasked brain, he resolved that 
the phantom individuals should no longer intrude on his 
hours of recreation and rest, but that when he closed the 
door of his study he would shut them all in, and only meet 
them again when he came back to resume his task. That 
force of will with which he was so pre-eminently en- 



DICKENS. . 235 

dowed enabled him to ignore these manifold existences 
tOl he chose to renew their acquaintance. He said, also, 
that when the children of his brain had once been 
launched, free and clear of him, into the world, they 
would sometimes turn up in the most unexpected manner 
to look their father in the face. 

Sometimes he would pull my arm while we were walk- 
ing together and whisper, " Let us avoid Mr. Pumble- 
chook, who is crossing the street to meet us " ; or, " Mr. 
Micawber is coming ; let us turn down this alley to get 
out of his way." He always seemed to enjoy the fun of 
his comic people, and had unceasing mirth over Mr. Pick- 
wick's misadventures. In answer one day to a question, 
prompted by psychological curiosity, if he ever dreamed 
of any of his characters, his reply was, "Never; and I 
am convinced that no writer (judging from my own ex- 
perience, which cannot be altogether singular, but must 
be a type of the experience of others) has ever dreamed 
of the creatures of his own imagination. It would," he 
went on to say, " be like a man's dreaming of meeting 
himseK, which is clearly an impossibility. Things ex- 
terior to one's self must always be the basis of dreams." 
The growing up of characters in his mind never lost for 
him a sense of the marvellous. " What an unfathomable 
mystery there is in it all ! " he said one day. Taking up 
a wineglass, he continued : " Suppose I choose to call this 
a character, fancy it a man, endue it with certain qualities ; 
and soon the fine filmy webs of thought, almost impalpa- 
ble, coming from every direction, we know not whence, 
spin and weave about it, until it assumes form and 
beauty, and becomes instinct with life." 

In society Dickens rarely referred to the traits and 
characteristics of people he had known; but during a 
long walk in the country he delighted to recall and 
describe the peculiarities, eccentric and otherwise, of dea^ 



'236 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and gone as well as living friends. Then Sydney Smith 
and Jeffrey and Christopher North and Talfourd and 
Hood and Rogers seemed to live over again in his vivid 
reproductions, made so impressive by his marvellous 
memory and imagination. As he walked rapidly along 
the road, he appeared to enjoy the keen zest of his com- 
panion in the numerous impersonations with which he 
was indulging him. 

He always had much to say of animals as well as of 
men, and there were certain dogs and horses he had met 
and known intimately which it was specially interesting 
to him to remember and picture. There was a particular 
dog in Washington which he was never tired of delineat- 
ing. The first night Dickens read in the Capital this dog 
attracted his attention. " He came into the hall by him- 
self," said he, " got a good place before the reading began, 
and paid strict attention throughout. He came the second 
night, and was ignominiously shown out by one of the 
check-takers. On the third night he appeared again with 
another dog, which he had evidently promised to pass in 
free ; but you see," continued Dickens, " upon the imposi- 
tion being unmasked, the other dog apologized by a howl 
and withdrew. His intentions, no doubt, were of the 
best, but he afterwards rose to explain outside, with such 
inconvenient eloquence to the reader and his audience, 
that they were obliged to put him down stairs." 

He was such a firm believer in the mental faculties of 
animals, that it would have gone hard with a companion 
with whom he was talking, if a doubt were thrown, how- 
ever inadvertently, on the mental intelligence of any four- 
footed friend that chanced to be at the time the subject 
of conversation. All animals which he took under his 
especial patronage seemed to have a marked affection for 
him. Quite a colony of dogs has always been a feature 
at Gad's HiU. 



DICKENS. ♦ 237 

In many walks and talks with Dickens, his conversa- 
tion, now, alas ! so imperfectly recalled, frequently ran on 
the habits of birds, the raven, of course, interesting him 
particularly. He always liked to have a raven hopping 
about his grounds, and whoever has read the new Preface 
to " Barnaby Eudge " must remember several of his old 
friends in that line. He had quite a fund of canary-bird 
anecdotes, and the pert ways of birds that picked up 
worms for a living afforded him infinite amusement. He 
would give a capital imitation of the way a robin-red- 
breast cocks his head on one side preliminary to a dash 
forward in the direction of a wriggling victim. There is 
a small grave at Gad's Hill to which Dickens would 
occasionally take a friend, and it was quite a privilege to 
stand with him beside the burial-place of little Dick, the 
family's favorite canary. 

What a treat it was to go with him to the London 
Zoological Gardens, a place he greatly delighted in at all 
times ! He knew the zoological address of every animal, 
bird, and fish of any distinction ; and he could, without 
the slightest hesitation, on entering the grounds, proceed 
straightway to the celebrities of claw or foot or fin. The 
delight he took in the hippopotamus family was most ex- 
hilarating. He entered familiarly into conversation with 
the huge, unwieldy creatures, and they seemed to under- 
stand him. Indeed, he spoke to all the unphilological in- 
habitants with a directness and tact which went home to 
them at once. He chaffed with the monkeys, coaxed the 
tigers, and bamboozled the snakes, with a dexterity unap- 
proachable. All the keepers knew him, he was such a 
loyal visitor, and I noticed they came up to him in a 
friendly way, with the feeling that they had a sympathetic 
listener always in Charles Dickens. 

There were certain books of which Dickens liked to 
talk during his walka Among his especial favorites were 



238 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

the writings of Cobbett, DeQuincey, tbe Lectures on Moral 
Philosophy by Sydney Smith, and Carlyle's French Revo- 
lution. Of this latter Dickens said it was the book of all 
others which he read perpetually and of which he never 
tired, — the book which always appeared more imaginative 
in proportion to the fresh imagination he brought to it, a 
book for inexhaustibleness to be placed before every other 
book. When writing the " Tale of Two Cities," he asked 
Carlyle if he might see one of the works to which he re- 
ferred in his history ; whereupon Carlyle packed up and 
sent down to Gad's Hill all his reference volumes, and 
Dickens read them faithfully. But the more he read the 
more he was astonished to find how the facts had passed 
through the alembic of Carlyle's brain and had come out 
and fitted themselves, each as a part of one great whole, 
making a compact result, indestructible and unrivalled; 
and he always found himself turning away from the books 
of reference, and re-reading with increased wonder this 
marvellous new growth. There were certain books par- 
ticularly hateful to him, and of which he never spoke ex- 
cept in terms of most ludicrous raillery. Mr. Barlow, in 
" Sandford and Merton," he said was the favorite enemy 
of his boyhood and his first experience of a bore. He had 
an almost supernatural hatred for Barlow, "because he 
was so very instnictwe, and always hinting doubts with 
regard to the veracity of ' Sindbad the Sailor,' and had no 
belief whatever in ' The Wonderful Lamp ' or ' The En- 
chanted Horse.' " Dickens rattling his mental cane over 
the head of Mr. Barlow was as much better than any 
play as can be well imagined. He gloried in many of 
Hood's poems, especially in that biting Ode to Rae Wilson, 
and he would gesticulate with a fine fervor the lines, 

". . . . the hypocrites who ope Heaven's door 
Obsequious to the sinful man of riches, — 

But put the wicked, naked, bare-legged poor 
In parish stocks instead of breeches." 



DICKENS. ^29 

One of his favorite "books was Pepys's Diary, the curious 
discovery of the key to which, and the odd characteristics 
of its writer, were a never-failing source of interest and 
amusement to him. The vision of Pepys hanging round 
the door of the theatre, hoping for an invitation to go in, 
not being able to keep away in spite of a promise he had 
made to himself that he would spend no more money 
foolishly, delighted him. Speaking one day of Gray, the 
author of the Elegy, he said : " No poet ever came walking 
down to posterity with so small a book under his arm." 
He preferred Smollett to Fielding, putting " Peregrine 
Pickle " above " Tom Jones." Of the best novels by his 
contemporaries he always spoke with warm commendation, 
and " Griffith Gaunt " he thought a production of very 
high merit. He was " hospitable to the thought " of all 
writers who were really in earnest, but at the first exhibi- 
tion of floundering or inexactness he became an unbeliever. 
People with dislocated understandings he had no toler- 
ance for. 

He was passionately fond of the theatre, loved the 
lights and music and flowers, and the happy faces of the 
audience ; he was accustomed to say that his love of the 
theatre never failed, and, no matter how dull the play, he 
was always careful while he sat in the box to make no 
sound which could hurt the feelings of the actors, or show 
any lack of attention. His genuine enthusiasm for Mr. 
Fechter's acting was most interesting. He loved to de- 
scribe seeing him first, quite by accident, in Paris, having 
strolled into a little theatre there one night. " He was 
making love to a woman," Dickens said, " and he so ele- 
vated her as well as himseK by the sentiment in which 
he enveloped her, that they trod in a purer ether, and in 
another sphere, quite lifted out of the present. * By 
heavens ! ' I said to myself, ' a man who can do this can 



240 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

do anything.' I never saw two people more purely and 
instantly elevated by the power of love. The manner, 
also," he continued, " in which he presses the hem of the 
dress of Lucy in the Bride of Lammermoor is something 
wonderful. The man has genius in him which is unmis- 
takable." 

Life behind the scenes was always a fascinating study 
to Dickens. " One of the oddest sights a green-room 
can present," he said one day, " is when they are collect- 
ing children for a pantomime. For this purpose the 
prompter calls together all the women in the ballet, and 
begins giving out their names in order, while they press 
about him eager for the chance of increasing their poor 
pay by the extra pittance their children will receive. ' Mrs. 
Johnson, how many ? ' ' Two, sir.' ' What ages ? ' ' Seven 
and ten.' ' Mrs. B., how many ? ' and so on, until the re- 
quired number is made up. The people who go upon the 
stage, however poor their pay or hard their lot, love it too 
well ever to adopt another vocation of their free-will. A 
mother will frequently be in the wardrobe, children in the 
pantomime, elder sisters in the ballet, etc." 

Dickens's habits as a speaker differed from those of 
tnost orators. He gave no thought to the composition of 
the speech he was to make till the day before he was to 
deliver it. No matter whether the effort was to be a long 
or a short one, he never wrote down a word of what he 
was going to say ; but when the proper time arrived for 
him to consider his subject, he took a walk into the 
country and the thing was done. When he returned he 
was all ready for his task. 

He liked to talk about the audiences that came to hear 
him read, and he gave the palm to his Parisian one, say- 
ing it was the quickest to catch his meaning. Although 
he said there were many always present in his room in 



DICKENS. 241 

Paris who did not fully understand English, yet the 
French eye is so quick to detect expression that it never 
failed instantly to understand what he meant by a look or 
an act. " Thus, for instance," he said, " when I was im- 
personating Steerforth in " David Copperfield," and gave 
that peculiar grip of the hand to Emily's lover, the French 
audience burst into cheers and rounds of applause." He 
said with reference to the preparation of his readings, 
that it was three months' hard labor to get up one of his 
own stories for public recitation, and he thought he had 
greatly improved his presentation of the " Christmas 
Carol " while in this country. He considered the storm 
scene in " David Copperfield " one of the most effective 
of his readings. The character of Jack Hopkins in " Bob 
Sawyer's Party" he took great delight in representing, 
and as Jack was a prime favorite of mine, he brought him 
forward whenever the occasion prompted. He always 
spoke of Hopkins as my particular friend, and he was 
constantly quoting him, taking on the peculiar voice and 
turn of the head which he gave Jack in the public 
reading. 

It gave him a natural pleasure when he heard quota- 
tions from his own books introduced without effort into 
conversation. He did not always remember, when his 
own words were quoted, that he was himself the author 
of them, and appeared astounded at the memory of others 
in this regard. He said Mr. Secretary Stanton had a 
most extraordinary knowledge of his books and a power 
of taking the text up at any point, which he supposed to 
belong to only one person, and that person not himself. 

It was said of Garrick that he was the chcerfullest man 
of his age. This can be as truly said of Charles Dickens. 
In his presence there was perpetual sunshine, and gloom 
was banished as having no sort of relationship with him. 
No man suffered more keenly or sympathized more fully 
11 p 



242 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

than lie did with want and misery ; "but his motto was, 
" Don't stand and cry ; press forward and help remove 
the difficulty." The speed with which he was accustomed 
to make the deed follow his yet speedier sympathy was 
seen pleasantly on the day of his visit to the School-ship 
in Boston Harbor. He said, previously to going on board 
that ship, nothing would tempt him to make a speech, for 
he should always be obliged to do it on similar occasions, 
if he broke through his rule so early in his reading tour. 
But Judge EusseU had no sooner finished his simple talk, 
to which the boys listened, as they always do, with eager 
faces, than Dickens rose as if he could not help it, and 
with a few words so magnetized them that they wore 
their hearts in their eyes as if they meant to keep the 
words forever. An enthusiastic critic once said of John 
Kuskin, "that he could discover the Apocalypse in a 
daisy." As noble a discovery may be claimed for Dick- 
ens. He found all the fair humanities blooming in the 
lowliest hovel. He never put on the good Samaritan : 
fhat character was native to him. Once while in this 
country, on a bitter, freezing afternoon, — night coming 
down in a drifting snow-storm, — he was returning with 
me from a long walk in the country. The wind and 
baffling sleet were so furious that the street in which we 
happened to be fighting our way was quite deserted ; it 
was almost impossible to see across it, the air was so thick 
with the tempest ; all conversation between us had ceased, 
for it was only possible to breast the storm by devoting 
our whole energies to keeping on our feet ; we seemed to 
be walking in a different atmosphere from any we had 
ever before encountered. All at once I missed Dickens 
from my side. What had become of him ? Had he gone 
down in the drift, utterly exhausted, and was the snow 
burying him out of sight ? Very soon the sound of his 
cheery voice was heard on the other side of the way. 



DICKENS. 243 

With great difficulty, over the piled-up snow, I struggled 
across the street, and there found him lifting up, almost 
by main force, a blind old man who had got bewildered 
by the storm, and had fallen down unnoticed, quite unable 
to proceed. Dickens, a long distance away from him, 
with that tender, sensitive, and penetrating vision, ever 
on the alert for suffering in any form, had rushed at once 
to the rescue, comprehending at a glance the situation of 
the sightless man. To help him to his feet and aid him 
homeward in the most natural and simple way afforded 
Dickens such a pleasure as only the benevolent by in- 
tuition can understand. 

Throughout his life Dickens was continually receiving 
tributes from those he had benefited, either by his books 
or by his friendship. There is an odd and very pretty 
story (vouched for here as true) connected with the in- 
fluence he so widely exerted. In the winter of 1869, 
soon after he came up to London to reside for a few 
months, he received a letter from a man telling him that 
he had begun life in the most humble way possible, and 
that he considered he owed his subsequent great success 
and such education as he had given himself entirely to 
the encouragement and cheering influence he had derived 
from Dickens's books, of which he had been a constant 
reader from his childhood. He had been made a partner 
in his master's business, and when the head of the house 
died, the other day, it was found he had left the whole of 
his large property to this man. As soon as he came 
into possession of this fortune, his mind turned to 
Dickens, whom he looked upon as his benefactor and 
teacher, and his first desire was to tender him some testi- 
monial of gratitude and veneration. He then begged 
Dickens to accept a large sum of money. Dickens 
declined to receive the money, but his unknown friend 
sent him instead two silver table ornaments of OTeat 



244 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

intrinsic value bearing this inscription : " To Charleg 
Dickens, from one who has been cheered and stimulated 
by his writings, and held the author amongst his first 
Eemembrances when he became prosperous." One of 
these silver ornaments was supported by three figures, 
representing three seasons. In the original design there 
were, of course, four, but the donor was so averse to 
associating the idea of Winter in any sense with Dickens 
that he caused the workman to alter the design and leave 
only the cheerful seasons. No event in the great author's 
career was ever more gratifying and pleasant to him. 

His friendly notes were exquisitely turned, and are 
among his most charming compositions. They abound in 
felicities only like himself In 1860 he wrote to me while 
I was sojourning in Italy : " I should like to have a walk 
through Eome with you this bright morning (for it reaUy 
is bright in London), and convey you over some favorite 
ground of mine. I used to go up the street of Tombs, 
past the tomb of Cecilia Metella, away out upon the wild 
campagna, and by the old Appian Eoad (easily tracked out 
among the ruins and primroses), to Albano. There, at a 
very dirty inn, I used to have a very dirty lunch, gener- 
ally with the family's dirty linen lying in a corner, and 
inveigle some very dirty Vetturino in sheep-skin to take 
me back to Eome." 

In a little note in answer to one I had written consult- 
ing him about the purchase of some old furniture in Lon- 
don he wrote : " There is a chair (without a bottom) at a 
shop near the office, which I think would suit you. It 
cannot stand of itself, but will almost seat somebody, if 
you put it in a corner, and prop one leg up with two 
wedges and cut another leg ofC The proprietor asks £20, 
but says he admires literature and would take £18. He 
is of republican principles and I think would take £17 
19 5. 6 d. from a cousin ; shall I secure this prize ? It la 



DICKENS. 245 

Very ugly and wormy, and it is related, but without proof, 
that on one occasion Washington declined to sit down 
in it." 

Here are the last two missives I ever received from his 
dear, kind hand : — 

6 Htde Pabe Place, London, W., Friday, January 14, 1870. 

My dear Fields : We live here (opposite the Marble Arch) in a 
charming house until the 1st of June, and then return to G-ad's. 
The Conservatory is completed, and is a brilliant success ; — but aa 
expensive one ! 

I read this afternoon at three, — a beastly proceeding which I 
particularly hate, — and again this day vv^eek at three. These morn- 
ing readings particularly disturb me at my book-work ; neverthe- 
less I hope, please God, to lose no way on their account. An 
evening reading once a week is nothing. By the by, I recom- 
menced last Tuesday evening with the greatest brilliancy. 

I should be quite ashamed of not having written to you and my 
dear Mrs. Fields before now, if I did n't know that you will both, 
understand how occupied I am, and how naturally, when I put my 
papers away for the day, I get up and fly. I have a large room here, 
with three fine windows, overlooking the Park, — unsurpassable for 
airiness and cheerfulness. 

You saw the announcement of the death of poor dear Harness. 
The circumstances are curious. He wrote to his old friend the 
Dean of Battle saying he would come to visit him on that day (the 
day of his death). The Dean wrote back : " Come next day, in- 
stead, as we are obliged to go out to dinner, and you will be alone." 
Harness told his sister a httle impatiently that he must go on the 
first-named day, — that he had made up his mind to go, and must. 
He had been getting himself ready for dinner, and came to a part 
of the staircase whence two doors opened, — one, upon another 
level passage ; one, upon a flight of stone steps. He opened thfc 
wrong door, fell down the steps, injured himself very severely, and 
died in a few hours. 

You wiU know — /don't — what Fechter's success is in America 
at the time of this present writing. In his farewell performances at 
the Princess's he acted very finely. I thought the three first acts 
of his Hamlet very much better than I had ever thought them be- 
fore, — and I always thought very highly of them. We gave him a 
foaming stirrup cup at Gads Hill. 



246 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Forster (who has been ill with his bronchitis again) thinks No. 2 
of the new book (Edwin Drood) a clincher, — I mean that word 
(as his own expression) for Clincher. There is a curious interest 
steadily working up to No. 5, which requires a great deal of art 
and self-denial. I think also, apart from character and picturesque- 
ness, that the young people are placed in a very novel situation. 
So I hope — at Nos. 5 and 6 the story will tm-n upon an interest 
suspended untU the end. 

I can't beheve it, and don't, and won't, but they say Harry's twenty- 
first birthday is next Sunday. I have entered him at the Temple 
just now ; and if he don't get a fellowship at Trinity Hall when 
his time comes, I shall be disappointed, if in the present disappointed 
state of existence. 

I hope you may have met with the little touch of Radicalism I 
gave them at Birmingham in the words of Buckle ? With pride I 
observe that it makes the regular political traders, of all sorts, per- 
fectly mad, Sich was my intentions, as a grateful acknowledg- 
ment of having been misrepresented. 

I think Mrs. 's prose very admirable, but I don't beheve it ! 

No, I do not. My conviction is that those Islanders get frightfully 
bored by the Islands, and wish they had never set eyes upon them I 

Charley Collins has done a charming cover for the monthly part 
of the new book. At the very earnest representations of Millais 
(and after having seen a great number of his drawings) I am going 
to engage with a new man; retaining, of course, C. C.'s cover 
aforesaid. K has made some more capital portraits, and is al- 
ways improving. 

My dear Mrs. Fields, if " He " (made proud by chairs and bloated 
by pictures) does not give you my dear love, let us conspire against 
him when you find him out, and exclude him from all future confi- 
dences. Until then 

Ever afiectionately yours and his, 

C. D. 

5 Htde Park Plicb, London, W., Monday, April 18, 1870. 
Mt dear Fields : I have been hard at work all day until post 
time, and have only leisure to acknowledge the receipt, the day be- 
fore yesterday, of your note containing such good news of Fechter 
and to assure you of my undiminished regard and affection. 

We have been doing wonders with No. 1 of Edwin Drood. M 
has very, very far outstripped every one of its predecessors. 
Ever your affectionate friend, 

Charles Dickens. 



DICKENS. 247 

Bright colors werie a constant delight to him ; and the 
gay hues of flowers were those most welcome to his eye. 
When the rhododendrons were in bloom in Cobham Park, 
the seat of his friend and neighbor, Lord Darnley, he al- 
ways counted on taking his guests there to enjoy the 
magnificent show. He delighted to turn out for the de- 
lectation of his Transatlantic cousins a couple of postilions 
in the old red jackets of the old red royal Dover road, 
making the ride as much as possible like a hoKday drive 
in England fifty years ago. 

When in the mood for humorous characterization, 
Dickens's hilarity was most amazing. To hear him tell a 
ghost story with a very florid imitation of a very pallid 
ghost, or hear him sing an old-time stage song, such as he 
used to enjoy in his youth at a cheap London theatre, to 
see him imitate a hon in a menagerie-cage, or the clown 
in a pantomime when he flops and folds himself up like a 
jack-knife, or to join with him in some mirthful game of 
his own composing, was to become acquainted with one of 
the most dehghtful and original companions in the world. 

On one occasion, during a walk with me, he chose to 
run into the wildest of vagaries about conversation. The 
ludicrous vein he indulged in during that two hours' 
stretch can never be forgotten. Amons other things, he 
said he had often thought how restricted one's conversation 
must become when one was visiting a man who was to be 
hanged in half an hour. He went on in a most surprising 
manner to imagine all sorts of difficulties in the way of 
becoming interesting to the poor fellow. " Suppose," said 
he, " it should be a rainy morning while you are making 
the call, you could not possibly indulge in the remark, 
'We shall have fine weather to-morrow, sir,' for what 
would that be to him ? For my part, I think," said he, 
" I should confine my observations to the days of Julius 
Csesar or King Alfred." 



248 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

At another time when speaking of what was constantly 
said about him in certain newspapers, he observed : " I 
notice that about once in every seven years I become the 
victim of a paragraph disease. It breaks out in England, 
travels to India by the overland route, gets to America per 
Cunard line, strikes the base of the Eocky Mountains, and, 
rebounding back to Europe, mostly perishes on the steppes 
of Eussia from inanition and extreme cold." When he 
felt he was not under observation, and that tomfoolery 
would not be frowned upon or gazed at with astonishment, 
he gave himself up without reserve to healthy amusement 
and strengthening mirth. It was his mission to make 
people happy. Words of good cheer were native to his 
lips, and he was always doing what he could to lighten 
the lot of all who came into his beautiful presence. His 
talk was simple, natural, and direct, never dropping into 
circumlocution nor elocution. Now that he is gone, who- 
ever has known him intimately for any considerable period 
of time will linger over his tender regard for, and his en- 
gaging manner with, children ; his cheery " Good Day " to 
poor people he happened to be passing in the road ; his 
trustful and earnest " Please God," when he was promis- 
ing himself any special pleasure, like rejoining an old 
friend or returning again to scenes he loved. At such 
times his voice had an irresistible pathos in it, and his 
smile diffused a sensation like music. When he came in- 
to the presence of squalid or degraded persons, such as 
one sometimes encounters in almshouses or prisons, he had 
such soothing words to scatter here and there, that those 
who had been " most hurt by the archers " listened gladly, 
and loved him without knowing who it was that found it 
in his heart to speak so kindly to them. 

Oftentimes during long walks in the streets and by-ways 
of London, or through the pleasant Kentish lanes, or 
among the localities he has rendered forever famous in hia 



DICKENS. 249 

books, I have recalled the sweet words in which Shake- 
speare has embalmed one of the characters in Love's 
Labor's Lost: — 

"A merrier man, 
Witliiii the limit of becoming mirth, 
I never spent an hour's talk withal : 
His eye begets occasion for his wit ; 
For every object that the one doth catch. 
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest. 
Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor, 
Delivers in such apt and gracious words 
That aged ears play truant at his tales, 
And younger hearings are quite ravished ; 
So sweet and voluble is his discourse." 

Twenty years ago Daniel Webster said that Dickens 
had already done more to ameliorate the condition of the 
English poor than all the statesmen Great Britain had 
sent into Parliament. During the unceasing demands 
upon his time and thought, he found opportunities of 
visiting personally those haunts of suffering in London 
which needed the keen eye and sympathetic heart to 
bring them before the public for rehef. Wlioever has ac- 
companied him, as I have, on his midnight walks into the 
cheap lodging-houses provided for London's lowest poor, 
cannot have failed to learn lessons never to be forgotten, 
Newgate and Smithfield were lifted out of their abomina- 
tions by his eloquent pen, and many a hospital is to-day 
all the better charity for having been visited and watched 
by Charles Dickens. To use his own words, through his 
whole life he did what he could " to lighten the lot of 
those rejected ones whom the world has too long forgotten 
and too often misused." 

These inadequate, and, of necessity, hastily written, 
records must stand for what they are worth as personal 
recollections of the great author who has made so many 
millions happy by his inestimable genius and sympathy. 
His life will no doubt be written out in full by some 
11* 



250 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

competent hand in England ; but however numerous the 
volumes of his biography, the haK can hardly be told of 
the good deeds he has accomplished for his fellow-men. 

And who could ever tell, if those volumes were written, 
of the subtle qualities of insight and sympathy which 
rendered him capable of friendship above most men, — 
which enabled him to reinstate its ideal, and made his 
presence a perpetual joy, and separation from him an 
ineffaceable sorrow ? 



WORDSWORTH. 



" His mind is, as it were, coeval with the primary forms of things ; his 
imagination holds immediately from tiature, and ' owes no allegiance ' but 
* io the elements.'' .... He sees all things in himself." — HAZLITT. 



V. 

WORDSWORTH, 

THAT portrait looking down so calmly from the wall 
is an original picture of the poet Wordsworth, drawn 
in crayon a few years before he died. He went up to 
London on purpose to sit for it, at the request of Moxon, 
his publisher, and his friends in England always consid- 
ered it a perfect likeness of the poet. After the head was 
engraved, the artist's family disposed of the drawing, and 
through the watchful kindness of my dear old friend, 
Mary Russell Mitford, the portrait came across the Atlan- 
tic to this house. Miss Mitford said America ought to 
have on view such a perfect representation of the great 
poet, and she used all her successful influence in my be- 
half. So there the picture hangs for anybody's inspection 
at any hour of the day. 

I once made a pilgrimage to the small market-town of 
Hawkshead, in the valley of Esthwaite, where Words- 
worth went to school in his ninth year. The thoughtful 
boy was lodged in the house of Dame Anne Tyson in 
1788 ; and I had the good fortune to meet a lady in the 
village street who conducted me at once to the room 
which the lad occupied while he was a scholar under the 
Rev. William Taylor, whom he loved and venerated so 
much. I went into the chamber which he afterwards 
described in The Prelude, where he 

" Had lain awake on summer nights to watch 
The moon in splendor couched among the leaves 
Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood " ; 



2 54 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and I visited many of the beautiful spots whicli tradition 
points out as the favorite haunts of his childhood. 

It was true Lake-country weather when I knocked at 
Wordsworth's cottage door, three years before he died, 
and found myself shaking hands with the poet at the 
threshold. His daughter Dora had been dead only a few 
months, and the sorrow that had so recently fallen upon 
the house was still dominant there. I thought there was 
something prophet-like in the tones of his voice, as well 
as in his whole appearance, and there was a noble tran- 
quillity about him that almost awed one, at first, into 
silence. As the day was cold and wet, he proposed we 
should sit down together in the only room in the house 
where there was a fire, and he led the way to what seemed 
a common sitting or dining room. It was a plain apart- 
ment, the rafters visible, and no attempt at decoration 
noticeable. Mrs. Wordsworth sat knitting at the fireside, 
and she rose with a sweet expression of courtesy and 
welcome as we entered the apartment. As I had just left 
Paris, which was in a state of commotion, Wordsworth, 
was eager in his inquiries about the state of things on the 
other side of the Channel. As our talk ran in the direc- 
tion of French revolutions, he soon became eloquent and 
vehement, as one can easily imagine, on such a theme. 
There was a deep and solemn meaning in aU he had to 
say about France, which I recall now with added interest. 
The subject deeply moved him, of course, and he sat 
looking into the fire, discoursing in a low monotone, 
sometimes quite forgetful that he was not alone and so- 
liloquizing. I noticed that Mrs. Wordsworth listened 
as if she were hearing him speak for the first time in her 
life, and the work on which she was engaged lay idle in 
her lap, while she watched intently every movement of 
her husband's face. I also was absorbed in the man and 
in his speech. I thought of the long years he had lived 




^- 



WORDSWORTH. 255 

in communion with nature in that lonely but lovely re- 
gion. The story of his life was familiar to me, and I sat 
as if under the influence of a spell. Soon he turned and 
plied me with questions about the prominent men in 
Paris whom I had recently seen and heard in the Chamber 
of Deputies. " How did Guizot bear himself ? What 
part was De Tocqueville taking in the fray ? Had I 
noticed George Lafayette especially ? " America did not 
seem to concern him much, and I waited for him to in- 
troduce the subject, if he chose to do so. He seemed 
pleased that a youth from a far-away country should find 
his way to Eydal cottage to worship at the shrine of an 
old poet. 

By and by we fell into talk about those who had been 
his friends and neighbors among the hills in former years, 
'• And so," he said, " you read Charles Lamb in America ? " 
" Yes," I replied, " and love him too." " Do you hear that, 
Mary ? " he eagerly inquired, turning round to Mrs. 
Wordsworth. " Yes, William, and no wonder, for he was 
one to be loved everywhere," she quickly answered. Then 
we spoke of Hazlitt, whom he ranked very high as a 
prose-writer; and when I quoted a fine passage from 
Hazlitt's essay on Jeremy Taylor, he seemed pleased at 
my remembrance of it. 

He asked about Inman, the American artist, who had 
painted his portrait, having been sent on a special mission 
to Eydal by Professor Henry Keed of Philadelphia, to 
procure the likeness. The painter's daughter, who ac- 
companied her father, made a marked impression on 
Wordsworth, and both he and his wife joined in the 
question, "Are all the girls in America as pretty as she ?" 
I thought it an honor Mary Inman might well be proud 
of to be so complimented by the old bard. In speaking 
of Henry Pieed, his manner was affectionate and tender. 

Now and then I stole a glance at the gentle lady, the 



'256 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

poet's wife, as she sat knitting silently by the fireside. 
This, then, was the Mary whom in 1802 he had brought 
home to be his loving companion through so many years. 
I could not help remembering too, as we all sat there 
together, that when children they had " practised reading 
and spelling under the same old dame at Penrith," and 
that they had always been lovers. There sat the woman, 
now gray-haired and bent, to whom the poet had ad- 
dressed those undying poems, " She was a phantom of 
delight," " Let other bards of angels sing," " Yes, thou art 
fair," and " 0, dearer far than life and light are dear." I 
recalled, too, the " Lines written after Thirty-six Years 
of Wedded Life," commemorating her whose 

" Mom into noon did pass, noon into eve, 
And the old day was welcome as the young, 
As welcome, and as beautiful, — in sooth 
More beautiful, as being a thing more holy." 

When she raised her eyes to his, which I noticed she did 
frequently, they seemed overflowing with tenderness. 

When I rose to go, for I felt that I must not intrude 
longer on one for whom I had such reverence, Words- 
worth said, " I must show you my library, and some trib- 
utes that have been sent to me from the friends of my 
verse." His son John now came in, and we all proceeded 
to a large room in front of the house, containing his books. 
Seeing that I had an interest in such things, he seemed 
to take a real pleasure in showing me the presentation 
copies of works by distinguished authors. We read to- 
gether, from many a well-worn old volume, notes in the 
handwriting of Coleridge and Charles Lamb. I thought 
he did not praise easily those whose names are indissolu- 
bly connected with his own in the history of literature. 
It was languid praise, at least, and I observed he hesi- 
tated for mild terms which he could apply to names 
almost as great as his own. I believe a duplicate of the 



WORDSWORTH. 257 

portrait which Inman had painted for Eeed hung in the 
room ; at any rate a picture of himself was there, and he 
seemed to regard it with veneration as we stood before it. 
As we moved about the apartment, Mrs. Wordsworth qui- 
etly followed us, and Kstened as eagerly as I did to every- 
thing her husband had to say. Her spare little figure 
flitted about noiselessly, pausing as we paused, and always 
walking slowly behind us as we went from object to ob- 
ject in the room. John Wordsworth, too, seemed deeply 
interested to watch and listen to his father. " And now," 
said Wordsworth, " I must show you one of my latest 
presents." Leading us up to a corner of the room, we all 
stood before a beautiful statuette which a young sculptor 
had just sent to him, illustrating a passage in " The Ex- 
cursion." Turning to me, Wordsworth asked, " Do you 
know the meaning of this figure ? " I saw at a glance 
that it was 

" A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 
Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell," 

and I quoted the lines. My recollection of the words pleased 
the old man ; and as we stood there in front of the figure 
he began to recite the whole passage from " The Excur- 
sion," and it sounded very grand from the poet's own 
lips. He repeated some fifty lines, and I could not help 
thinking afterwards, when I came to hear Tennyson read 
his own poetry, that the younger Laureate had caught 
something of the strange, mysterious tone of the elder 
bard. It was a sort of chant, deep and earnest, which 
conveyed the impression that the reciter had the highest 
opinion of the poetry. 

Although it was raining still, Wordsworth proposed to 
show me Lady Fleming's grounds, and some other spots 
of interest near his cottage. Our walk was a wet one ; 
but as he did not seem incommoded by it, I was only too 



2S8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

glad to hold tlie umbrella over his venerable head. As 
we went on, he added now and then a sonnet to the scen- 
ery, telling me precisely the circumstances under which 
it had been composed. It is many years since my mem- 
orable walk with the author of "The Excursion," but I 
can call up his figure and the very tones of his voice so 
vividly that I enjoy my interview over again any time I 
choose. He was then nearly eighty, but he seemed hale 
and quite as able to walk up and down the hills as ever. 
He always led back the conversation that day to his own 
writings, and it seemed the most natural thing in the 
world for him to do so. All his most celebrated poems 
seemed to live in his memory, and it was easy to start 
him off by quoting the first line of any of his pieces^ 
Speaking of the vastness of London, he quoted the whole 
of his sonnet describing the great city, as seen in the 
morning from Westminster Bridge. When I parted with 
him at the foot of Eydal Hill, he gave me messages to 
Eogers and other friends of his whom I was to see in 
London. As we were shaking hands I said, " How glad 
your many readers in America would be to see you on our 
side of the water ! " " Ah," he replied, " I shall never see 
your country, — that is impossible now ; but " (laying his 
hand on his son's shoulder) " John shall go, please God, 
some day." I watched the aged man as he went slowly 
up the hill, and saw him disappear through the little gate 
that led to his cottage door. The ode on " Intimations of 
Immortality " kept sounding in my brain as I came down 
the road, long after he had left me. 

Since I sat, a little child, in " a woman's school," Words- 
worth's poems had been familiar to me. Here is my 
first school-book, with a name written on the cover by 
dear old "Marm Sloper," setting forth that the owner 
thereof is " aged 5." As I went musing along in West- 
moreland that rainy morning, so many years ago, little 



RVDAL MOUNT: WORDSWORTH'S HOME 



WORDSWORTH. 259 • 

figures seemed to accompany me, and childish voices filled 
the air as I trudged through the wet grass. My small 
ghostly companions seemed to carry in their little hands 
quaint-looking dog's-eared books, some of them covered 
with cloth of various colors. None of these phantom 
children looked to be over six years old, and all v/ere 
bareheaded, and some of the girls wore old-fashioned 
pinafores. They were the schoolmates of my childhood, 
and many of them must have come out of their graves 
to run by my side that morning in Eydal. I had not 

thought of them for years. Little Enuly E read 

from her book with a chirping lisp : — 

" 0, what 's the matter ? what 's the matter ? 
What is 't that ails young Harry Gill ? " 

Mary B began : — 

" Oft I had heard of Lucy Grey " ; 

Nancy C piped up : — 

** ' How many are you, then,' said I, 
• If there are two in heaven ? ' 
The little maiden did reply, 
' master ! we are seven,' " 

Among the group I seemed to recognize poor pale little 

Charley F , who they told me years ago was laid in 

St. John's Churchyard after they took him out of the 
pond, near the mill-stream, that terrible Saturday after- 
noon. He too read from his well-worn, green-baize-covered 
book, — 

"The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink." 

Other white-headed little urchins trotted along veri/ near 
me all the way, and kept saying over and over their 
" spirit ditties of no tone " till I reached the village inn, 
and sat down as if in a dream of long-past years. 

Two years ago I stood by Wordsworth's grave in the 



26a YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

churchyard at Grasmere, and my companion wove a 
chaplet of flowers and placed it on the headstone. After- 
wards we went into the old church and sat down in the 
poet's pew. " They are all dead and gone now," sighed 
the gray-headed sexton ; " but I can remember when the 
seats used to be filled by the family from Eydal Mount 
Now they are all outside there in yon grass." 



MISS MIT FORD, 



" I care not, Fortune, what you me deny : 
You cannot rob me of free Nature' s grace ; 
You cannot shut the windows of the sky, 
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face ; 
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace 
The woods and lawns, by living streams at eve : 
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace. 
And I their toys to the great children leave : 
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave." 

THOMSON. 



VI. 

MISS MITFORD. 

THAT portrait hanging near "Wordsworth's is next to 
seeing Mary Eussell iMitford herseK as I first saw 
her, twenty-three years ago, in her geranium-planted cot- 
tage at Three-lMile Cross. She sat to John Lucas for the 
picture in her serene old age, and the likeness is faidtless. 
She had proposed to herself to leave the portrait, as it 
was her own property, to me in her will ; but as I hap- 
pened to be in England during the latter part of her life, 
she altered her determination, and gave it to me from her 
own hands. 

Sydney Smith said of a certain quarrelsome person, 
that his very face was a breach of the peace. The face 
of that portrait opposite to us is a very different one from 
Sydney's fighter. Ever}i:hing that belongs to the beauty 
of old age one will find recorded in that charming coun- 
tenance. Serene cheerfulness most abounds, and that is a 
quality as rare as it is commendable. It will be observed 
that the dress of Miss IMitford in the picture before us 
is quaint and somewhat antiquated even for the time 
when it was painted, but a pleasant face is never out 
of fashion. 

An observer of how old age is neglected in America 
said to me the other day, " It seems an impertinence to be 
alive after sixty on this side of the globe " ; and I have 
often thought how much we lose by not cultivating fine 
old-fashioned ladies and gentlemen. Our aged relatives 



264 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and friends seem to be tucked away, nowadays, into neg- 
lected corners, as though it were the correct thing to give 
them a long preparation for still narrower quarters. For 
my own part, comely and debonair old age is most attrac- 
tive ; and when I see the " thick silver- white hair lying 
on a serious and weather-worn face, like moonlight on a 
stout old tower," I have a strong tendency to lift my hat, 
whether I know the person or not. 

" No spring nor summer beauty hath sucli grace 
As I have seen in an autumnal face." 

It was a fortunate hour for me when kind-hearted John 
Kenyon said, as I was leaving his hospitable door in Lon- 
don one summer midnight in 1847, "You must know my 
friend. Miss Mitford. She lives directly on the line of 
your route to Oxford, and you must call witii my card 
and make her acquaintance." I had lately been talking 
with Wordsworth and Christopher North and old Samuel 
Eogers, but my hunger at that time to stand face to face 
with the distinguished persons in English literature was 
not satisfied. So it was during my first " tourification " 
in England that I came to know Miss Mitford. The day 
selected for my call at her cottage door happened to be a 
perfect one on which to begin an acquaintance with the 
lady of "Our Village." She was then living at Three- 
Mile Cross, having removed there from Bertram House in 
1820. The cottage where I found her was situated on 
the high road between Basingstoke and Heading ; and the 
village street on which she was then living contained the 
public-house and several small shops near by. There was 
also close at hand the village pond full of ducks and 
geese, and I noticed several young rogues on their way to 
school were occupied in worrying their feathered friends. 
The windows of the cottage were filled with flowers, and 
cowslips and violets were plentifully scattered about the 
little garden. Miss Mitford liked to have one dog, at 



MISS MITFORD. 265 

least, at her heels, and this day her pet seemed to be con- 
stantly under foot. I remember the room into which I 
was shown was sanded, and a quaint old clock behind the 
door was marking off the hour in small but very loud 
pieces. The cheerful old lady called to me from the head 
of the stairs to come up into her sitting-room. I sat down 
by the open window to converse with her, and it was 
pleasant to see how the village children, as they went by, 
stopped to bow and curtsey. One curly-headed urchin 
made bold to take off his well-worn cap, and wait to be 
recognized as " little Johnny." " No great scholar," said 
the kind-hearted old lady to me, " but a sad rogue among 
our flock of geese. Only yesterday the young marauder 
was detected by my maid with a plump gosHng stuffed 
half-way into his pocket !" While she was thus discours- 
ing of Johnny's peccadilloes, the little fellow looked up 
with a knowing expression, and very soon caught in his 
cap a gingerbread dog, which the old lady threw to him 
from the window. " I wish he loved his book as well as 
he relishes sweetcake," sighed she, as the boy kicked up 
his heels and disappeared down the lane. 

Her conversation that afternoon, full of anecdote, ran on 
in a perpetual flow of good-humor, and I was shocked, on 
looking at my watch, to find I had stayed so long, and had 
barely time to reach the railway-station in season to arrive 
at Oxford that night. We parted with the mutual deter- 
mination and understanding to keep our friendship warm 
by correspondence, and I promised never to come to Eng- 
land again without finding my way to Three-Mile Cross. 

During the conversation that day. Miss Mitford had 
many inquiries to make concerning her American friends. 
Miss Catherine Sedgwick, Daniel Webster, and Dr. Chan- 
ning. Her voice had a peculiar ringing sweetness in it, 
rippling out sometimes like a beautiful chime of silver 
bells ; and when she told a comic story, hitting off some 



266 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

one of her acquaintances, she joined in with the laugh at 
the end with great heartiness and naivete. When listen- 
ing to anything that interested her, she had a way of com- 
ing into the narrative with " Dear me, dear me, dear me," 
three times repeated, which it was very pleasant to hear. 

From that summer day our friendship continued, and 
during other visits to England I saw her frequently, driv- 
ing about the country with her in her pony-chaise, and 
spending many happy hours in the new cottage which she 
afterwards occupied at Swallowfield. Her health had 
broken down years before, from too constant attendance 
on her invalid j)arents, and she was never certain of a well 
day. When her father died, in 1842, shamefully in debt 
(for he had squandered two fortunes not exactly his own, 
and was always one of the most improvident of men, be- 
longing to that class of impecunious individuals who seem 
to have been born insolvent), she said, " Everybody shaU 
be paid, if I sell the gown ofi" my back or pledge my little 
pension." And putting her shoulder to the domestic 
wheel, she never flagged for an instant, or gave way to 
despondency. 

She was always cheerful, and her talk is delightful to 
remember. From girlhood she had known and had been 
intimate with most of the prominent writers of her time, 
and her observations and reminiscences were so shrewd 
and pertinent that I have scarcely known her equal. 

Carlyle tells us " nothing so lifts a man from all his 
mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true ad- 
miration" ; and Miss Mitford admired to such an extent that 
she must have been lifted in this way nearly all her lifetime. 
Indeed she erred, if she erred at all, on this side, and over- 
praised and over-admired everything and everybody whom 
she regarded. When she spoke of Beranger or Dumas or 
Hazlitt or Holmes, she exhausted every term of worship 
and panegyric. Louis Napoleon was one of her most 




A.fi. /^^>A^ 



b 



MISS MITFORD. 267 

potent crazes, and I fully believe, if she had been alive 
during the days of his downfall, she would have died of 
grief. When she talked of Munden and Bannister and 
Fawcett and Emery, those delightful old actors for whom 
she had had such an exquisite relish, she said they had 
made comedy to her a living art full of laughter and 
tears. How often have I heard her describe John Kemble, 
Mrs. Siddons, Miss O'Neil, and Edmund Kean, as they 
were wont to electrify the town in her girlhood ! With 
what gusto she reproduced Elliston, who was one of her 
prime favorites, and tried to make me, through her repre- 
sentation of him, feel what a spirit there was in the man. 
Although she had been prostrated by the hard work and 
increasing anxieties of forty years of authorship, when I 
saw her she was as fresh and independent as a skylark. 
She was a good hater as well as a good praiser, and she 
left nothing worth saving in an obnoxious reputation. 

I well remember, one autumn evening, when half a 
dozen friends were sitting in her library after dinner, 
talking with her of Tom Taylor's Life of Haydon, then 
lately published, how graphically she described to us the 
eccentric painter, whose genius she was among the fore- 
most to recognize. The flavor of her discourse I cannot 
reproduce ; but I was too much interested in what she 
was saying to forget the main incidents she drew for our 
edification, during those pleasant hours now far away 
in the past. 

" I am a terrible forgetter of dates," she used to say, 
when any one asked her of the time when ; but for the 
manner how she was never at a loss. " Poor Haydon ! " 
she began. " He was an old friend of mine, and I am in- 
debted to Sir William Elford, one of my dear father's 
correspondents during my girlhood, for a suggestion which 
sent me to look at a picture then on exhibition in Lon- 
don, and thus was brought about my knowledge of the 



'S58 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

painter's existence. He, Sir William, had taken a fancy 
to me, and I became his child-correspondent. Few things 
contribute more to that indirect after-education, which is 
worth all the formal lessons of the school-room a thou- 
sand times told, than such good-humored condescension 
from a clever man of the world to a girl almost young 
enough to be his granddaughter. I owe much to that 
correspondence, and, amongst other debts, the acquain- 
tance of Haydon. Sir William's own letters were most 
charming, — full of old-fashioned courtesy, of quaint 
humor, and of pleasant and genial criticism on literature 
and on art. An amateur-painter himself, painting in- 
terested him particularly, and he often spoke much and 
warmly of the young man from Plymouth, whose picture 
of the ' Judgment of Solomon ' was then on exhibition in 
London. ' You must see it,' said he, ' even if you come 
to town on purpose.' " — The reader of Haydon's Life will 
remember that Sir William Elford, in conjunction with a 
Plymouth banker named Tingecombe, ultimately pur- 
chased the picture. The poor artist was overwhelmed 
with astonishment and joy when he walked into the ex- 
hibition-room and read the label, " Sold," which had been 
attached to his picture that morning before he arrived. 
" My first impulse," he says in his Autobiography, " was 
gratitude to God." 

" It so happened," continued Miss Mitford, " that I 
merely passed through London that season, and, being 
detained by some of the thousand and one nothings which 
are so apt to detain women in the great city, I arrived at 
the exhibition, in company with a still younger friend, so 
near the period of closing, that more punctual visitors 
were moving out, and the doorkeeper actually turned u3 
and our money back. I persisted, however, assuring him 
that I only wished to look at one picture, and promising 
not to detain bim long. Whether my entreaties would 



MISS MITFORD. 269 

have carried the point or not, I cannot tell ; but haK a 
crown did ; so we stood admiringly before the ' Judgment 
of Solomon.' I am no great judge of painting; but that 
picture impressed me then, as it does now, as excellent in 
composition; in color, and in that great quality of telling 
a story which appeals at once to every mind. Our de- 
light was sincerely felt, and most enthusiastically ex- 
pressed, as we kept gazing at the picture, and seemed, 
unaccountably to us at first, to give much pleasure to the 
only gentleman who had remained in the room, — a young 
and very distinguished-looking person, who had watched 
with evident amusement our negotiation with the door- 
keeper. Beyond indicating the best position to look at 
the picture, he had no conversation with us ; but I soon 
surmised that we were seeing the painter, as well as his 
painting; and when, two or three years afterwards, a 
friend took me by appointment to view the ' Entry into 
Jerusalem,' Haydon's next great picture, then near its 
completion, I found I had not been mistaken. 

" Haydon was, at that period, a remarkable person to 
look at and listen to. Perhaps your American word 
bright expresses better than any other his appearance and 
manner. His figure, short, slight, elastic, and vigorous, 
looked stiU more light and youthful from the little sailor's- 
jacket and snowy trousers which formed his painting 
costume. His complexion was clear and healthful. His 
forehead, broad and high, out of all proportion to the 
lower part of his face, gave an unmistakable character of 
intellect to the finely placed head. Indeed, he liked to 
observe that the gods of the Greek sculptors owed much 
of their elevation to being similarly out of drawing ! 
The lower features were terse, succinct, and powerful, — 
from the bold, decided jaw, to the large, firm, ugly, good- 
humored mouth. His very spectacles aided the general 
expression ,• they had a look of the man. But how shall 



27<> YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

I attempt to tell you of his brilliant conversation, of his 
rapid, energetic manner, of his quick turns of thought, as 
he flew on from topic to topic, dashing his brush here and 
there upon the canvas? Slow and quiet persons were a 
good deal startled by this suddenness and mobility. He 
left such people far behind, mentally and bodily. But his 
talk was so rich and varied, so earnest and glowing, his 
anecdotes so racy, his perception of character so shrewd, 
and the whole tone so spontaneous and natural, that the 
want of repose was rather recalled afterwards than felt at 
the time. The alloy to this charm was a slight coarseness 
of voice and accent, which contrasted somewhat strangely 
with his constant courtesy and high breeding. Perhaps 
this was characteristic. A defect of some sort pervades 
his pictures. Their great want is equality and congruity, 
— that perfect union of qualities which we call taste. 
His apartment, especially at that period when he lived in 
his painting-room, was in itself a study of the most 
picturesque kind. Besides the gTeat picture itself, for 
which there seemed hardly space between the walls, it 
•was crowded with casts, lay figures, arms, tripods, vases, 
draperies, and costumes of all ages, weapons of all nations, 
books in all tongues. These cumbered the floor ; whilst 
around hung smaller pictures, sketches, and drawings, 
replete with originality and force. With chalk he could 
do what he chose. I remember he once drew for me a 
head of hair with nine of his sweeping, vigorous strokes ! 
Among the studies I remarked that day in his apartment 
was one of a mother who had just lost her only child, — 
a most masterly rendering of an unspeakable grief. A 
sonnet, which I could not help writing on this sketch, 
gave rise to our long correspondence, and to a friendship 
which never flagged. Everybody feels that his life, as 
told by !Mr. Taylor, with its terrible catastrophe, is a stern 
lesson to young artists, an awful warning that cannot ba 



MISS MITFORD. 271 

Bet aside. Let us not forget that amongst his many faults 
are qualities which hold out a bright example. His de- 
votion to his noble art, his conscientious pursuit of every 
study connected with it, his unwearied industry, his love 
of beauty and of excellence, his warm family affection, 
his patriotism, his courage, and his piety, will not easily 
be surpassed. Thinking of them, let us speak tenderly 
of the ardent spirit whose violence would have been 
softened by better fortune, and who, if more successful, 
would have been more gentle and more humble." 

And so with her vigilant and appreciative eye she saw, 
and thus in her own charming way she talked of, the 
man whose name, says Taylor, as a popularizer of art, 
stands without a rival among his brethren. 

She loathed mere dandies, and there were no epithets 
too hot for her contempts in that direction. Old beaux 
she heartily despised, and, speaking of one whom she had 
known, I remember she quoted with a fine scorn this ap- 
propriate passage from Dickens : " Ancient, dandified men, 
those crippled invalides from the campaign of vanity, 
w^here the only powder was hair-powder, and the only 
bullets fancy balls." 

Tliere was no half-way with her, and she never could 

have said with M S , when a certain visitor left 

the room one day after a call, "If we did not love our dear 
friend Mr. so much, should n't we hate him tremen- 
dously ! " Her neighbor, John Euskin, she thought as elo- 
quent a prose- writer as Jeremy Taylor, and I have heard 
her go on in her fine way, giving preferences to certain 
modern poems far above the works of the great masters 
of song. Pascal says that " the heart has reasons that 
reason does not know " ; and Miss Mitford was a charm- 
ing exemplification of this wise saying. 

Her dogs and her geraniums were her great glories. She 
Used to write me long letters about Fanchon, a dog whose 



9^2 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

personal acquaintance I had made some time before, while 
on a visit to her cottage. Every virtue under heaven she 
attributed to that canine individual ; and I was obliged to 
allow in my return letters, that, since our planet began to 
spin, nothing comparable to Fanchon had ever run on four 
legs. I had also known Flush, the ancestor of Fanchon, 
intimately, and had been accustomed to hear wonderful 
things of that dog ; but Fanchon had graces and genius 
unique. Miss Mitford would have joined with Hamerton 
in his gratitude for canine companionship, when he says, 
" I humbly thank Divine Providence for having invented 
dogs, and I regard that man with wondering pity who can 
lead a dogless life." 

Her fondness for rural life, one may well imagine, was 
almost unparalleled. I have often been with her among 
the wooded lanes of her pretty country, listening for the 
nightingales, and on such occasions she would discourse so 
eloquently of the sights and sounds about us, that her talk 
seemed to me " far above singing." She had fallen in love 
with nature when a little child, and had studied the land- 
scape till she knew familiarly every flower and leaf which 
grows on English soil. She delighted in rural vagabonds 
of every sort, especially in gypsies ; and as they flourished 
in her part of the country, she knew all their ways, and 
had charming stories to tell of their pranks and thievings. 
She called them " the commoners of nature " ; and once I 
remember she pointed out to me on the road a villanous- 
looking youth on whom she smiled as we passed, as if he 
had been Virtue itself in footpad disguise. She knew aU 
the literature of rural life, and her memory was stored with 
delightful eulogies of forests and meadows. "When she 
repeated or read aloud the poetry she loved, her accents 
were 

" like flowers' voices, if they could but speak." 

She understood how to enjoy rural occupations and rural 




/^ 



Ccj^-<-t^ 



MISS MITFORD. 273 

existence, and she liad no patience with her friend Charles 
Lamb, who preferred the town. Walter Savage Landor 
addressed these lines to her a few months before she died, 
and they seem to me very perfect and lovely in their ap- 
plication : — 

" The hay is carried ; and the hours 
Snatch, as they pass, the linden flow'rs ; 
And children leap to pluck a spray 
Bent earthward, and then run away. 
Park-keeper! catch me those grave thieves 
About whose frocks the fragrant leaves, 
Sticking and fluttering here and there, 
No false nor faltering witness bear. 

" I never view such scenes as these 
In grassy meadow girt with trees, 
But comes a thought of her who now 
Sits with serenely patient brow 
Amid deep sufferings : none hath told 
More pleasant tales to young and old. 
Fondest was she of Father Thames, 
But rambled to Hellenic streams ; 
Nor even there could any tell 
The country's purer charms so well 
As Mary Mitford. 

Verse ! go forth 
And breathe o'er gentle breasts her worth. 
Needless the task .... but should she see 
One hearty wish from you and me, 
A moment's pain it may assuage, — 
A rose-leaf on the couch of Age." 

And Harriet Martineau pays her respects to my friend 
in this wise : " Miss Mitford's descriptions of scenery, 
brutes, and human beings have such singular merit, that 
she may be regarded as the founder of a new style ; and 
if the freshness wore off with time, there was much more 
than a compensation in the fine spirit of resignation and 
cheerfulness which breathed through everything she wrote, 
and endeared her as a suffering friend to thousands who 
formerly regarded her only as a most entertaining stranger." 

What lovely drives about England I have enjoyed with 
12* B 



274 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Miss Mitford as my companion and guide ! We used to 
arrange with her trusty Sam for a day now and then in 
the open air. He would have everything in readiness at 
the appointed hour, and be at his post with that careful, 
kind-hearted little maid, the "hemmer of flounces," all 
prepared to give the old lady a fair start on her day's ex- 
pedition. Both those excellent servants delighted to make 
their mistress happy, and she greatly rejoiced in their de- 
votion and care. Perhaps we had made our plans to visit 
Upton Court, a charming old house where Pope's Arabella 
Termor had passed many years of her married life. On 
the way thither we would talk over " The Eape of the 
Lock " and the heroine, Belinda, who was no other than 
Arabella herseK. Arriving on the lawn in front of the 
decaying mansion, we would stop in the shade of a gigan- 
tic oak, and gossip about the times of Queen Elizabeth, 
for it was then the old house was built, no doubt. 

Once I remember Miss Mitford carried me on a pilgrim- 
age to a grand old village church with a tower half covered 
with ivy. We came to it through laurel hedges, and passed 
on the way a magnificent cedar of Lebanon. It was a 
superb pile, rich in painted glass windows and carved oak 
ornaments. Here Miss Mitford ordered the man to stop, 
and, turning to me with great enthusiasm, said, " This is 
Shiplake Church, where Alfred Tennyson was married ! " 
Then we rode on a little farther, and she called my atten- 
tion to some of the finest wych-elms I had ever seen. 

Another day we drove along the valley of the Loddon, 
and she pointed out the Duke of Wellington's seat of 
Strathfieldsaye. As our pony trotted leisurely over the 
charming road, she told many amusing stories of the 
Duke's economical habits, and she rated him soundly for 
his money-saving propensities. The furniture in the house 
she said was a disgrace to the great man, and she described 
a certain old carpet that had done service so many years 



MISS MITFORD. 275 

in the establishment that no one could tell what the 
original colors were. 

But the mansion most dear to her in that neighborhood 
was the residence of her kind friends the Eussells of Swal- 
lowfield Park. It is indeed a beautiful old place, fuU of 
historical and literary associations, for there Lord Claren- 
don wrote his story of the Great Eebellion. Miss Mitford 
never ceased to be thankful that her declining years were 
passing in the society of such neighbors as the Eussells. 
If she were unusually ill, they were the first to know of it 
and come at once to her aid. Little attentions, so grateful 
to old age, they were always on the alert to offer ; and she 
frequently told me that their affectionate kindness had 
helped her over the dark places of life more than once, 
where without their succor she must have dropped by 
the way. 

As a letter-writer, Miss Mitford has rarely been sur- 
passed. Her " Life, as told by herself in Letters to her 
Friends," is admirably done in every particular. Few 
letters in the English language are superior to hers, and I 
think they will come to be regarded as among the choicest 
specimens of epistolary literature. When her friend, the 
Eev. WiUiam Harness, was about to collect from Miss 
Mitford's correspondents, for publication, the letters she 
had written to them, he applied to me among others. I 
was obliged to withhold the correspondence for a reason 
that existed then ; but I am no longer restrained from 
printing it now. Miss Mitford's first letter to me was 
written in 1847, and her last one came only a few weeks 
before she died, in 1855. I am inclined to think that her 
correspondence, so full of point in allusions, so fuU. of 
anecdote and recollections, will be considered among her 
finest writings. Her criticisms, not always the wisest, were 
always piquant and readable. She had such a charming 
humor, and her style was so delightful, that her friendly 



276 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

notes had a relish about them quite their own. In read- 
ing some of them here collected one will see that she 
overrated my little services as she did those of many of 
her personal friends. I shall have hard work to place the 
dates properly, for the good lady rarely took the trouble to 
put either month or year at the head of her paper. 

She began her correspondence with me before I left 
England after making her acquaintance, and, true to the 
instincts of her kind heart, the object of her first letter 
was to press upon my notice the poems of a young friend 
of hers, and she was constantly saying good words for un- 
fledged authors who were struggling forward to gain recog- 
nition. No one ever lent- such a helping hand as she did 
to the young writers of her country. 

The recognition which America, very early in the career 
of Miss Mitford, awarded her, she never forgot, and she 
used to say, " It takes ten years to make a literary repu- 
tation in England, but America is wiser and bolder, and 
dares say at once, ' This is fine.' " 

Sweetness of temper and brightness of mind, her never- 
failing characteristics, accompanied her to the last ; and 
she passed on in her usual cheerful and affectionate mood, 
her sympathies uncontracted by age, narrow fortune, 
and pain. 

A plain substantial cross marks the spot in the old 
churchyard at Swallowfield, where, according to her own 
wish, Mary Mitford lies sleeping. It is proposed to erect 
a memorial in the old parish church to her memory, and 
her admirers in England have determined, if a sufficient 
sum can be raised, to build what shall be known as " The 
Mitford Aisle," to afford accommodation for the poor peo- 
ple who are not able to pay for seats. Several of Miss 
Mitford's American friends will join in this beautiful ob- 
ject, and a tablet will be put up in the old church com- 
memorating the fact that England and America united in 
the tribute. 



MISS MITFORD. 277 



LETTERS, 1848-1849. 

Thkee-Mile Cross, December 4, 1848. 
Dear Mr. Fields : My silence has been caused by severe illness. 
For more than a twelvemonth my health has been so impaired as to 
leave me a very poor creature, almost incapable of any exertion 
at all times, and frequently suffering severe pain besides. So 
that I have to entreat the friends who are good enough to care for 
me never to be displeased if a long time elapses between my letters. 
My correspondents being so numerous, and I myself so utterly 
alone, without any one even to fold or seal a letter, that the very 
physical part of the task sometimes becomes more fatiguing than I 
can bear. I am not, generally speaking, confined to my room, or 
even to the house ; but the loss of power is so great that after the 
short drive or shorter walk which my very skilful medical adviser 
orders, I am too often compelled to retire immediately to bed, and I 
have not once been well enough to go out of an evening during the 
year 1848. Before its expiration I shall have completed my sixty- 
first year ; but it is not age that has so prostrated me, but the hard 
•work and increasing anxiety of thirty years of authorship, during 
which my poor labors were all that my dear father and mother 
had to look to, besides which for the greater part of that time I was 
constantly called upop to attend to the sick-bed, first of one aged 
parent and then of another. Few women could stand this, and I 
have only to be intensely thankful that the power of exertion did 
not fail until the necessity of such exertion was removed. Now 
my poor life is (beyond mere friendly feeling) of value to no one. 
I have, too, many alleviations, — in the general kindness of the 
neighborhood, the particular goodness of many admirable friends, 
the affectionate attention of a most attached and intelligent old 
servant, and above all in my continued interest in books and delight 
in reading. I love poetry and people as well at sixty as I did at six- 
teen, and can never be sufficiently grateful to G-od for having per- 
mitted me to retain the two joy-giving faculties of admiration and 
sympathy, by which we are enabled to escape from the conscious- 
ness of our own infirmities into the great works of all ages and the 
joys and sorrows of our immediate friends. Among the books 
which I have been reading with the greatest interest is the Life 
of Dr. Channing, and I can hardly tell you the glow of gratification 
with which I found my own name mentioned, as one of the writers 
in whose works that great man had taken pleasure; The approba- 



278 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

tion of Dr. Channing is something worth toihng for. I know no in- 
dividual suffrage that could have given me more delight. Besides 
this selfish pleasure and the intense interest with which I followed 
that admirable thinker through the whole course of his pure and 
blameless life, I have derived another and a dififerent satisfaction 
from that work, — I mean from its reception in England. I know 
nothing that shows a greater improvement in liberality in the least 
liberal part of the English public, a greater sweeping away of preju- 
dice whether national or sectarian, than the manner in which even 
the High Church and Tory party have spoken of Dr. Channing. 
They reaUy seem to cast aside their usual intolerance in his case, 
and to look upon a Unitarian with feelings of Christian fellowship. 
God grant that this spirit may continue I Is American literature 
rich in native biography ? Just have the goodness to mention to 
me any lives of Americans, whether illustrious or not, that are 
graphic, minute, and outspoken. I delight in French memoirs and 
English lives, especially such as are either autobiography or made 
out by diaries and letters : and America, a young country with 
manners as picturesque and unhackneyed as the scenery, ought to 
be full of such works. "We have had two volumes lately that will 
interest your countrymen : Mr. Milnes's Life of John Keats, that 
wonderful youth whose early death was, I think, the greatest loss 
that English poetry ever experienced. Some of the letters are 
very striking as developments ot character, and the richness of 
diction in the poetical fragments is exquisite. Mrs. Browning is 
still at Florence with her husband. She sees more Americans thau 
English. 

Books here are sadly depreciated. Mr. Dyce's admirable edition 
of Beaumont and Fletcher, brought out two years ago at £6 12 s. 
is now offered at £2 17 s. 

Adieu, dear Mr. Fields ; forgive my seeming neglect, and believ© 
me always most faithfully yours, 

M, R. MiTFORD. 

(No date, 1849.) 
Dear Mr. Fields : I cannot tell you how vexed I am at this mis- 
take about letters, which must have made you think me careless of 
your correspondence and ungrateful for your kindness. The samo 
thing has happened to me before, I may say often, with American 
letters, — with Professor Norton, Mrs. Sigourney, the Sedgwicks, 
— in short, I always feel an insecurity in writing to America 
which I never experience in corresponding with friends on the Con- 



MISS MITFORD. 279 

tinent; France, Germany, Italy, even Poland and Russia, are com- 
paratively certain. Whether it be the agents in London who lose 
letters, or some fault in the post-office, I cannot tell, but I have 
twenty times experienced the vexation, and it casts a certain dis- 
couragement over one's communications. However, I hope that 
this letter wiU reach you, and that you will be assured that the fault 
does not lie at my door. 

During the last year or two my health has been declining much, 
and I am just now thinking of taking a journey to Paris. My 
friend, Henry Chorley of the Athenasum, the first musical critic of 
Europe, is going thither next month to assist at the production of 
Meyerbeer's Prophete at the French Opera, and another friend will 
accompany me and my little maid to take care of us ; so that I 
have just hopes that the excursion, erenow much facilitated by rail- 
ways, may do me good. I have always been a great admirer of the 
great Emperor, and to see the heir of Napoleon at the Elysee seems 
to me a real piece of poetical justice. I know many of his friends 
in England, who all speak of him most highly ; one of them says, 
" He is the very impersonation of calm and simple honesty." I 
hope the nation will be true to him, but, as Mirabeau says, " t^iere 
are no such words as 'jamais' or 'toujours' with the French 

public." 

lOth of June, 1849. 

I have been waiting to answer your most kind and interesting 
letter, dear Mr. Fields, until I could announce to you a publication 
that Mr. Colburn has been meditating and pressing me for, but 
which, chiefly I believe from my own fault in not going to town, 
and not liking to give him or Mr. Shoberl the trouble of coming 
here, is now probably adjourned to the autumn. The fact is that I 
have been and still am very poorly. We are stricken in our vani- 
ties, and the only things that I recollect having ever been immoder- 
ately proud of — my garden and my personal activity — have both 
now turned into causes of shame and pity ; the garden, declining from 
one bad gardener to worse, has become a ploughed field, — and I 
myself, from a severe attack of rheumatism, and since then a terrible 
fright in a pony-chaise, am now little better than a cripple. How- 
ever, if there be punishment here below, there are likewise consola- 
tions, — everybody is kind to me ; I retain the vivid love of reading,, 
which is one of the highest pleasures of life ; and very interesting 
persons come to see me sometimes, from both sides of the water, 
— witness, dear Mr. Fields, our present correspondence. One such 
person arrived yesterday in the shape of Doctor , who has been 



fiSo YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

working musical miracles in Scotland, (think of making singing 
teachers of children of four or five years of age !) and is now on his 
way to Paris, where, having been during seven years one of the 
editors of the National, he will find most of his colleagues of the 
newspaper filling the highest posts in the government. What is 
the American opinion of that great experiment ; or, rather, what is 
yours ? I wish it success from the bottom of my heart, but I am a 
little afraid, from their total want of political economy (we have not 
a school-girl so ignorant of the commonest principles of demand 
and supply as the whole of the countrymen of Turgot from the 
executive government downwards), and from a certain warlike 
tendency which seems to me to pierce through all their declarations 
of peace. We hear the flourish of trumpets through all the fine 
phrases of the orators, and indeed it is difiicult to imagine what 
they will do with their soi-disant ouvriers, — workmen who have 
lost the habit of labor, — unless they make soldiers of them. In 
the mean time some friends of mine are about to accompany your 
countryman Mr. Elihu Burritt as a deputation, and doubtless M. de 
Lamartine will give them as eloquent an answer as heart can desire, 
— no doubt he will keep peace if he can, — but the government 
have certainly not hitherto shown firmness or vigor enough to make 
one rely upon them, if the question becomes pressing and personal. 
In Italy matters seem to be very promising. We have here one of 
the Silvio Pelhco exiles, — Count Carpinetta, — whose story is quite 
a romance. He is just returned fi-om Turin, where he was received 
with enthusiasm, might have been returned as Deputy for two 
places, and did recover some of his property, confiscated years ago 
by the Austrians. It does one's heart good to see a piece of poetical 
justice transferred to real life. Apropos of public events, all Lon- 
don is talking of the prediction of an old theological writer of the 
name of Fleming, who in or about the year 1700 prophesied a 
revolution in France in 1794 (only one year wrong), and the fall 
of papacy in 1848 at all events. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

(No date, 1849.) 

Dear Mr. Fields : I must have seemed very ungrateful in being 
80 long silent. But your magnificent present of books, beautiful in 
every sense of the word, has come dropping in volume by volume, 
and only arrived complete (Mr. Longfellow's striking book being the 
last) about a fortnight ago, and then it found me keeping my room, 
as I am still doing, with a tremendous attack of neuralgia on the left 



MISS MITFORD. 28r 

side of the face. I am getting better now by dint of blisters and 
tonic medicine; but I can answer for that disease well deserving 
its bad eminence of "painful." It is however, blessed be Godl 
more manageable than it used to be ; and my medical friend, a man 
of singular skill, promises me a cure. 

I have seen things of Longfellow's as fine as anything in Camp- 
bell or Coleridge or Tennyson or Hood. After all, our great lyrical 
poets are great only for half a volume. Look at Gray and Collins, 
at your own edition of the man whom one song immortalized, at 
Gerald Griffin, whom you perhaps do not know, and at Words- 
worth, who, greatest of the great for about a hundred pages, is 
drowned in the flood of his own wordiness in his longer works. 
To be sure, there are giants who are rich to overflowing through a 
whole shelf of books, — Shakespeare, the mutual ancestor of English- 
men and Americans, above all, — and I think the much that they did, 
and did well, wiU be the great hold on posterity of Scott and of 
Byron. Have you happened to see Bulwer's King Arthur? It 
astonished me very much. I had a full persuasion that, with great 
merit in a certain way, he would never be a poet. Indeed, he is 
beginning poetry just at the age when Scott, Southey, and a host 
of others, left it off. But he is a strange person, full of the power- 
ful quality called will, and has produced a work which, although it is 
not at all in the fashionable vein and has made little noise, has yet 
extraordinary merit. When I say that it is more like Ariosto than 
any other English poem that I know, I certainly give it no mean 
praise. 

Everybody is impatient for Mr. George Ticknor's work. The 
subject seems to me ftill of interest. Lord Holland made a charm- 
ing book of Lope de Vega years ago, and Mr. Ticknor, with equal 
qualifications and a much wider field, will hardly fail of delighting 
England and America. Will you remember me to him most grate- 
fully and respectfiilly ? He is a man whom no one can forget. As 
to Mr. Prescott, I know no author now, except perhaps Mr. Ma- 
caulay, whose works command so much attention and give so much 
delight. I am ashamed to send you so little news, but I live in the 
country and see few people. The day 1 caught my terrible Tic I 
spent with the great capitalist, Mr. Goldsmidt, and Mr. Cobden and 
his pretty wife. He is a very different person from what one ex- 
pects, — graceful, tastefiil, playful, simple, and refined, and looking ab- 
solutely young. I suspect that much of his power springs from his 
genial character. I heard last week from Mrs. Browning ; she and 
her husband are at the Baths of Lucca. Mr. Xenyon's graceful 



282 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

book is out, and I must not forget to tell you that " Our Village " 
has been printed by Mr. Bohn in two volumes, which include the 
whole five. It is beautifully got up and very cheap, that is to say, 
for 3 s. 6 d a volume. Did Mr. Whittier send his works, or do I owe 
them wholly to your kindness ? If he sent them, I will write by 
the first opportunity. Say everything for me to your young friend, 

and believe me ever, dear Mr. F most faithfully and gratefully 

yours, M. R, M. 

1850. 

(No date.) 

I have to thank you very earnestly, dear Mr. Fields, for two very 
interesting books. The " Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal " are, 
I suppose, a sort of Lady Willoughby's Diary, so well executed that 
they read like one of the imitations of Defoe, — his " Memoirs of a 
Cavaher," for instance, which always seemed to me quite as true as 
if they had been actually written seventy years before. Thank you 
over and over again for these admirable books and for your great 
kindness and attention. What a perfectly American name Peabody 
is I And how strange it is that there should be in the United States 
so many persons of English descent whose names have entirely dis- 
appeared from the land of their fathers. Did you get my last un- 
worthy letter ? I hope you did. It would at all events show that 
there was on my part no intentional neglect, that I certainly had 
written in reply to the last letter that I received, although doubtless 
a letter had been lost on one side or the other. I live so entirely in 
the quiet country that I have little to tell you that can be interest- 
ing. Two things indeed, not generally known, I may mention : that 
Stanfield Hall, the scene of the horrible murder of which you have 
doubtless read, was the actual birthplace of Amy Robsart, — of 
whose tragic end, by the way, there is at last an authentic account, 
both in the new edition of Pepys and the first volume of the " Ro- 
mance of the Peerage " ; and that a friend of mine saw the other day 
in the window of a London bookseller a copy of Hume, ticketed 
" An Excellent Introduction to Macaulay." The great man was 
much amused at this practical compliment, as well he might be. 1 
have been reading the autobiographies of Lamartine and Chateau- 
briand, as well as Raphael, which, although not avowed, is of course 
and most certainly a continuation of " Les Confiances." What 
strange beings these Frenchmen are I Here is M. de Lamartine at 
eixty, poet, orator, historian, and statesman, writing the stories 
of two ladies — one of them married — who died for love of him ! 



MISS MITFORD. 283 

Think if Mr. Macaulay should announce himself as a lady-killer, and 
put the details not merely into a book, but into a feuiUeton ! 

The Brownings are living quite quietly at Florence, seeing, I sus- 
pect, more Americans than English. Mrs. Trollope has lost her only 
remaining daughter ; arrived in England only time enough to see 
her die. 

Adieu, dear Mr. Fields ; say everything for me to Mr. and Mra. 
Ticknor, and Mr. and Mrs. Norton. How much I should Hke to see 
youl 

Ever faithfully yours, M. R. M. 

(February, 1850.) 

You will have thought me either dead or dying, my dear Mr. 
Fields, for ungrateful I hope you could not think me to such a friend 
as yourself, but in truth I have been in too much trouble and 
anxiety to write. This is the story : I live alone, and my servants 
become, as they are in France, and ought, I think, always to be, 
really and truly part of my family. A most sensible young woman, 
my own maid, who waits upon me and walks out with me, (we have 
another to do the drudgery of our cottage,) has a httle fatherless boy 
who is the pet of the house. I wonder whether you saw him dur- 
ing the glimpse we had of you ! He is a fair-haired child of six 
years old, singularly quick in intellect, and as bright in mind and 
heart and temper as a fountain in the sun. He is at school in 
Reading, and, the small-pox raging there like a pestilence, they sent 
him home to us to be out of the way. The very next week my 
man-servant was seized with it, after vaccination of course. Our 
medical friend advised me to send him away, but that was, in my 
view of things, out of the question ; so we did the best we could, — 
my own maid, who is a perfect Sister of Charity in all cases of ill- 
ness, sitting up with him for seven nights following, for one or two 
were requisite during the delirium, and we could not get a nurse for 
love or money, and when he became better, then, as we had dreaded, 
our poor little boy was struck down. However, it has pleased G-od 
to spare him, and, after a long struggle, he is safe from the disorder 
and almost restored to his former health. But we are still under a 
sort of quarantine, for, although people pretend to believe in vacci- 
nation, they avoid the house as if the plague were in it, and stop 
their carriages at the end of the village and send inquiries and 
cards, and in my mind they are right. To say nothing of Reading, 
there have been above thirty severe cases, after vaccination, in our 
immediate neighborhoodj five of them fatal I had been inoculated 



.2B4 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

after the old style, my maid had had the small-pox the natural way, 
and the only one who escaped was a young girl who had been vac- 
cinated three times, the last two years ago. Forgive this long story ; 
it was necessary to excuse my most unthankful silence, and may 
serve as an illustration of the way a disease, supposed to be all but 
exterminated, is making head again in England- 
Thank you a thousand and a thousand times for your most de- 
lightful books. Mr. Whipple's Lectures are magnificent, and your 
own Boston Book could not, I think, be beaten by a London Book, 
certainly not approached by the collected works of any other 
British city, — Edinburgh, for example. 

Mr. Bennett is most grateful for your kindness, and Mrs. Brown- 
ing will be no less enchanted at the honor done her husband. It is 
most creditable to America that they think more of our thoughtful 
poets than the English do themselves. 

Two female friends of mine — Mrs. Acton Tindal, a young beauty 
as well as a woman of genius, and a Miss Juha Day, whom I have 
never seen, but whose verses show extraordinary purity of thought, 
feeling, and expression — have been putting forth books. Julia Day's 
second series she has done me the honor to inscribe to me, not- 
withstanding which I venture to say how very much I admire it, 
and so I think would you. Henry Chorley is going to be a happy 
man. All his life long he has been dying to have a play acted, and 
now he has one coming out at the Surrey Theatre, over Blackfriars 
Bridge. He lives much among fine people, and hkes the notion of 
a Faubourg audience. Perhaps he is right. I am not at all afraid 
of the play, which is very beautiful, — a blank-verse comedy full of 
truth and feehng. I don't know if you know Henry Chorley. He 
is the friend of Robert Browning, and the especial favorite of John 
Kenyon, and has always been a sort of adopted nephew of mine. 
Poor Mrs. Hemans loved him well ; so did a very diflFerent person, 
Lady Blessington, — so that altogether you may fancy him a very 
likeable person ; but he is much more, — generous, unselfish, loyal, 
and as true as steel, worth all his writings a thousand times over. If 
my house be in such condition as to allow of my getting to London 
to see " Old Love and New Fortune," I shall consult with Mr. 
Lucas about the time of sitting to him for a portrait, as I have prom- 
ised to do ; for, although there be several extant, not one is pas- 
sably like. John Lucas is a man of so much taste that he will make 
a real old woman's picture of it, just with my every-day look and 
dress. 

Will you make my most grateful thanks to Mr. Whipple, and 



MISS MITFORD. 285 

also to the author of " Greenwood Leaves," which I read with 
great pleasure, and say aU that is kindest and most respectful for 
me to Mr. and Mrs. G-eorge Ticknor. I shall indeed expect great 
delight from his book. 

Ever, dear Mr, Fields, most gratefully yours, 

M. R. M. 

We have had a Mr. Richmond here, lecturing and so forth. Do 
you know him ? I can fancy what Mr. Webster would be on the 
Hungarian question. To hear Mr. Cobden talk of it was like the 
sound of a trumpet. 

Three-Mile Cross, November 25, 1850. 

I have been waiting day after day, dear Mr. Fields, to send you two 
books, — one new, the other old, — one by my friend, Mr. Bennett ; 
the other a volume [her Dramatic Poems] long out of print in Eng- 
land, and never, I think, known in America. I had great difficulty in 
procuring the shabby copy which I send you, but I think you will 
like it because it is mine, and comes to you fi-om friend to friend, 
and because there is more of myself, that is, of my own inner feel- 
ings and fancies, than one ever ventures to put into prose. Mr. 
Bennett's volume, which is from himself as well as from me, I am 
sure you wiU like ; most thoroughly would like each other if ever 
you met. He has the poet's heart and the poet's mind, large, truth- 
ful, generous, and full of true refinement, delightful as a compan- 
ion, and invaluable as a man. 

After eight years' absolute cessation of composition, Henry Chor- 
ley, of the Athenaeum, coaxed me last summer into writing for a 
Lady's Journal, which he was editing for Messrs. Bradbury and 
Evans, certain Readings of Poetry, old and new, which will, I sup- 
pose, form two or three separate volumes when collected, buried as 
they now are amongst all the trash and crochet-work and millinery. 
They will be quite as good as MS., and, indeed, every paper will 
be enlarged and above as many again added. One pleasure will be 
the doing what justice I can to certain American poets, — Mr. Whit- 
tier, for instance, whose "Massachusetts to Virginia" is amongst 
the finest things ever written. I gave one copy to a most inteUi- 
gent Quaker lady, and have another in the house at this moment 
for Mrs. Walter, widow and mother of the two John Walters, 
father and son, so well known as proprietors of the Times. I shall 
cause my book to be immediately forwarded to you, but I don't 
think it will be ready for a twelvemonth. There is a good deal in 
vt of my own prose., and it takes a wider range than usual of poetry, 



286 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

including much that has never appeared in any of the specimen 
books. Of course, dear friend, this is strictly between you and me, 
because it would greatly damage the work to have the few frag- 
ments that have appeared as yet brought forward without revision 
and completion in their present detached and crude form. 

This England of ours is all alight and aflame with Protestant in- 
dignation against popery ; the Church of England being Hkely to 
rekindle the fires of 1780, by way of vindicating the right of pri- 
vate judgment. I, who hold perfect freedom of thought and of con- 
Bcience the most precious of all possessions, have of course my own 
hatred to these things. Cardinal Wiseman has taken advantage of 
the attack to put forth one of the most brilliant appeals that has 
appeared in my time ; of course you will see it in America. 

Professor Longfellow has won a station in England such as no 
American poet ever held before, and assuredly he deserves it. Ex- 
cept Beranger and Tennyson, I do not know any living man who has 
written things so beautiful. I think I like his Nuremburg best of all. 
Mr. Ticknor's great work, too, has won golden opinions, especially 
from those whose applause is fame; and I foresee that day by day 
our Uterature will become more mingled with rich, bright novelties 
from America, not reflections of European brightness, but gems all 
colored with your own skies and woods and waters. Lord Carlisle, 
the most accomplished of our ministers and the most amiable of our 
nobles, is giving this very week to the Leeds Mechanics' Institute a 
lecture on his travels in the United States, and another on the 
poetry of Pope. 

May I ask you to transmit the accompanying letter to Mrs. H ? 

She has sent to me for titles and dates, and fifty things in which I 
can give her little help ; but what I do know about my works I 
have sent her. Only, as, except that I believe her to live in Phila- 
delphia, I really am as ignorant of her address as I am of the year 
which brought forth the first volume of " Our Village," I am com- 
pelled to go to you for help in forwarding my reply. 

Ever, my dear Mr. Fields, most gratefully and faithfully yours, 

M. R. MiTFORD. 

Is not Louis Napoleon the most graceful of our European chiefs ? 
I have always had a weakness for the Emperor, and am delighted to 
find the heir of his name turnmg out so weU. 



JIIISS MITFORD. 287 

1851. 

February 10, 1851. 

I cannot tell you, my dear Mr. Fields, how much I thank you for 
your most kind letter and parcel, which, after sending three or four 

emissaries all over London to seek, (Mr. having ignored the 

matter to my first messenger,) was at last sent to me by the Great 

Western Railway, — I suspect by the aforesaid Mr. , because, 

although the name of the London bookseller was dashed out, a long- 
tailed letter was left just where the " p " would come in , and 

as neither Bohn's nor Whittaker's name boasts such a grace, I sus- 
pect that, in spite of his assurance, the packet was in the Strand, and 
neither in Ave Maria Lane nor in Henrietta Street, to both houses 
I sent. Thank you a thousand times for all your kindness. The 
orations are very striking. But I was delighted with Dr. Holmes's 
poems for their individuality. How charming a person he must be 1 
And how truly the portrait represents the mind, the lofty brow full of 
thought, and the wrinkle of humor in the eye ! (Between ourselves, 
I always have a little doubt of genius where there is no humor ; 
certainly in the very highest poetry the two go together, — Scott, 
Shakespeare, Fletcher, Burns.) Another charming thing in Dr. 
Holmes is, that every succeeding poem is better than the last. Is 
he a widower, or a bachelor, or a married man ? At all events, 
he is a true poet, and I like him all the better for being a physician, — 
the one truly noble profession. There are noble men in all profes- 
sions, but in medicine only are the great mass, almost the whole, 
generous, liberal, self-denying, living to advance science and to help 
mankind. If I had been a man I should certainly have followed 
that profession. I rejoice to hear of another Romance by the 
author of " The Scarlet Letter." That is a real work of genius. Have 
you seen " Alton Locke " ? No novel has made so much noise for a 
long time ; but it is, like " The Saint's Tragedy," inconclusive. Be- 
tween ourselves, I suspect that the latter part was written with the 
fear of the Bishop before his eyes (the author, Mr. Kingsley, is a 
clergyman of the Church of England), which makes the one volume 
almost a contradiction of the others. Mrs. Browning is still at 
Florence, where she sees scarcely any English, a few Italians, and 
many Americans. 

Ever most gratefully yours, 

M. R. M. 

(No date.) 
Dear Mr. Fields : I sent you a packet last week, but I have just 
received your two charming booksj and I cannot suffer a post to 



288 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

pass without thanking you for them. Mr. Whittier's volume is quite 
what might have been expected from the greatest of Quaker writers, 
the worthy compeer of Longfellow, and will give me other extracts 
to go with " From Massachusetts to Virginia " and " Cassandra 
Southwick " in my own book, where one of my pleasures will be 
trying to do justice to American poetry, and Dr. Holmes's fine 
"Astr^ea." We have nothing like that nowadays in England, 
Nobody writes now in the glorious resonant metre of Dryden, and 
very few ever did write as Dr. Holmes does. I see there is another 
volume of his poetry, but the name was new to me. How much I 
owe to you, my dear Mr. Fields ! That great romance, " The Scar- 
let Letter," and these fine poets, — for true poetry, not at all imitative, 
is rare in England, common as elegant imitative verse may be, — 
and that charming edition of Robert Browning. Shall you republish 
his wife's new edition ? I cannot tell you how much I thank you. 
I read an extract from the Times, containing a report of Lord Car- 
lisle's lecture on America, chiefly because he and Dr. Holmes say 
the same thing touching the slavish regard to opinion which pre- 
vails in America. Lord Carlisle is by many degrees the most ac- 
complished of our nobles. Another accomplished and cultivated 
nobleman, a friend of my own, we have just lost, — Lord Nugent, — • 
liberal, too, against the views of his family. 

You must make my earnest and very sincere congratulations to 
your friend. In publishing Gray, he shows the refinement of taste 
to be expected in your companion. I went over all his haunts two 
years ago, and have commemorated them in the book you will seo 
by and by, — the book that is to be, — and there I have put on 
record the bride-cake, and the finding by you on my table your 
own edition of Motherwell. You are not angry, are you ? If your 
father and mother in law ever come again to England, I shall re- 
joice to see them, and shall be sure to do so, if they will drop me a 
line. God bless you, dear Mr, Fields, 

Ever faithfully and gratefully yours, M. R. M. 

Three-Mile Cross, Jtily 20, 1861. 
You will have thought me most ungrateful, dear Mr. Fields, in 
being so long your debtor for a most kind and charming letter ; but 
first I waited for the " House of the Seven Gables," and then when 
it arrived, only a week ago, I waited to read it a second time. At 
Bixty-four life gets too short to allow us to read every book once 
and again ; but it is not so with Mr. Hawthorne's. The first time 
one sketches them (to borrow Dr. Holmes's excellent word), and 



/ 
/ 
/ 



^^^^ 




^f^-C^ ^^krU^^^t^H^ ^ 



MISS MITFORD. 289 

cannot put them down for the vivid interest ; the next, one lingers 
over the beauty with a calmer enjoyment. Very beautiful this 
book is I I thank you for it again and again. The legendary part 
is all the better for being vague and dim and shadowy, all pervading, 
yet never tangible ; and the living people have a charm about them 
which is as lifelike and real as the legendary folks are ghostly and 
remote. Phoebe, for instance, is a creation which, not to speak it 
profanely, is almost Shakespearian. I know no modern heroine to 
compare with her, except it be Eugene Sue's Rigolette, who shines 
forth amidst the iniquities of " Les Mysteres de Paris " like some 
rich, bright, fresh cottage rose thrown by evil chance upon a dung- 
hill. Tell me, please, about Mr. Hawthorne, as you were so good as 
to do about that charming person. Dr. Holmes. Is he young ? I 
think he is, and I hope so for the sake of books to come. And is 
he of any profession ? Does he depend altogether upon literature, 
as too many writers do here ? At all events, he is one of the 
glories of your most glorious part of great America. Tell me, too, 
what is become of Mr. Cooper, that other great novelist ? I think 
I heard from you, or from some other Transatlantic friend, that he 
was less genial and less beloved than so many other of your notabilities 
have been. Indeed, one sees that in many of his recent works ; but 
I have been reading many of his earlier books again, with ever-in-- 
creased admiration, especially I should say " The Pioneers " ; and one 
cannot help hoping that the mind that has given so much pleasure 
to so many readers will adjust itself so as to admit of its own 
happiness, — for very clearly the discomfort was his own fault, and 
he is too clever a person for one not to wish him well. 

I think that the most distinguished of our own young writers are, 
the one a dear friend of mine, John Ruskin ; the other, one who 
will shortly be so near a neighbor that we must know each other. 
It is quite wonderful that we don't now, for we are only twelve 
miles apart, and have scores of friends in common. This last is the 
Rev. Charles Kingsley, author of " Alton Locke " and " Yeast " and 
"The Saint's Tragedy." All these books are full of world-wide 
truths, and yet, taken as a whole, they are unsatisfactory and incon- 
clusive, knocking down without building up. Perhaps that is the 
fault of the social system that he lays bare, perhaps of the organi- 
zation of the man, perhaps a little of both. You will have heard 
probably that he, with other benevolent persons, established a sort 
or' socialist community (Christian socialism) for journeymen tailors, 
he himself being their chaplain. The evil was very great, for of 
twenty-one thousand of that class in London, fifteen thousand were 
13 S 



2go YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

ill-paid and only half-employed. For a while, that is, as long as the 
subscription lasted, all went well; but I fear this week that the 
money has come to an end, and so very likely will the experiment. 
Have you republished " Alton Locke " in America ? It has one 
character, an old Scotchman, equal to anything in Scott. The 
writer is stiU quite a young man, but out of health. I have heard 

(but this is between ourselves) that 's brain is suffering, — the 

terrible malady by which so many of our great mental laborers 
(Scott and Southey, above all) have fallen. Dr. Buckland is now 

dying of it. I am afraid may be so lost to the world and his 

friends, not merely because his health is going, but because certain 
peculiarities have come to my knowledge which look like it. A 
brother clergyman saw him the other day, upon a common near 
his own house, spouting, singing, and reciting verse at the top of his 
voice at one o'clock in the morning. Upon inquiring what was 
the matter, the poet said that he never went to bed till two or 
three o'clock, and frequently went out in that way to exercise 
his lungs. My informant, an orderly person of a very different 
stamp, set him down for mad at once; but he is much beloved 
among his parishioners, and if the escapade above mentioned do 
not indicate disease of the brain, I can only say it would be good for 
the country if we had more madmen of the same sort. As to John 
Euskin, I would not answer for quiet people not taking him fol 
crazy too. He is an enthusiast in art, often right, often wrong, — 
"in the right very stark, in the wrong very sturdy," — bigoted, 
perverse, provoking, as ever man was; but good and kind and 
charming beyond the common lot of mortals. There are some 
pages of his prose that seem to me more eloquent than anything 
out of Jeremy Taylor, and I should think a selection of his works 
would answer to reprint. Their sale here is something wonderful, 
considering their dearness, in this age of cheap literature, and the 
want of attraction in the subject, although the illustrations of the 
" Stones of Venice," executed by himself from his own drawings, are 
almost as exquisite as the writings. By the way, he does not say 
what I heard the other day from another friend, just returned from 
the city of the sea, that Taglioni has purchased four of the finest 
palaces, and is restoring them with great taste, by way of invest- 
ment, intending to let them to Russian and English noblemen. 
She was a very graceful dancer once, was Taglioni; but still it 
rather depoetizes the place, which of all others was richest in asso- 
ciations. 
Mrs. Browning has got as near to England as Paris, and holds 



MISS MITFORD. 291 

out enough of hope of coming to London to keep me from visiting 
it until I know her decision. I have not seen the great Exhibition, 
and, unless she arrives, most probably shall not see it. My lame- 
ness, which has now lasted five months, is the reason I give to my- 
self for not going, chairs being only admitted for an hour or two on 
Saturday mornings. But I suspect that my curiosity has hardly 
reached the fever-heat needful to encounter the crowd and the 
fatigue. It is amusing to find how people are cooling down about 
it. We always were a nation of idolaters, and always had the 
trick of avenging ourselves upon our poor idols for the sin of our 
own idolatry. Many an overrated, and then underrated, poet 
can bear witness to this. I remember when my friend Mr. Milnes 
was called the poet, although Scott and Byron were in their glory, 
and Wordsworth had written all of his works that will live. We 
make gods of wood and stone, and then we knock them to pieces ; 
and so figuratively, if not literally, shall we do by the Exhibition. 
Next month I am going to move to a cottage at Swallowfield, — 
so called, I suppose, because those migratory birds meet by miUions 
every autumn in the park there, now belonging to some friends of 
mine, and still famous as the place where Lord Clarendon wrote his 
history. That place is still almost a palace; mine an humble but 
very prettily placed cottage. 0, how proud and glad I should be, if 
ever I could receive Mr. and Mrs. Fields within its walls for more 
than a poor hour I I shall have tired you with this long letter, but 
you have made me reckon you among my friends, — ay, one of the 
best and kindest, — and must take the consequence. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

SWAUOWPIEIJ), Saturday Night. 

I write you two notes at once, my dear friend, whilst the recol- 
lection of your conversation is still in my head and the feeling of 
your kindness warm on my heart. To write, to thank you for a 
visit which has given me so much pleasure, is an impulse not to be 
resisted. Pray tell Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch how delighted I am to 
make their acquaintance and how earnestly I hope we may meet 
often. They are charming people. 

Another motive that I had for writing at once is to tell you that the 
more I think of the title of the forthcoming book, the less I like it ; 
and I care more for it, now that you are concerned in the matter, 
than I did before. " Personal Reminiscences " sounds like a bad 
title for an autobiography. Now this is nothing of the sort. It is 
literally a book made up of favorite scraps of poetry and prose j the 



292 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

bits of my own -writing are partly critical, and partly have been 
interwoven to please Henry Chorley and give something of novelty, 
and as it were individuaUty, to a mere selection, to take off the dry- 
ness and triteness of extracts, and give the pen something to say- 
in the work as well as the scissors. StUl, it is a book founded on 
other books, and since it pleased Mr. Bentley to object to " Read- 
ings of Poetry," because he said nobody in England bought poetry, 
why " Recollections of Books," as suggested by Mr. Bennett, ap- 
proved by me, and as I beUeved (till this very day) adopted by 
Mr. Bentley, seemed to meet exactly the truth of the case, and to 
be quite concession enough to the exigencies of the trade. By the 
other title we exposed ourselves, in my mind, to all manner of dan- 
ger. I shall write this by this same post to Mr. Bennett, and get the 
announcement changed, if possible ; for it seems to me a trick of the 
worst sort. I shall write a list of the subjects, and I only wish that I 
had duplicates, and I would send you the articles, for I am most 
uncomfortable at the notion of your being taken in to purchase a 
book that may, through this misnomer, lose its reputation in Eng- 
land ; for of course it will be attacked as an unworthy attempt to 

make it pass for what it is not 

Now if you dislike it, or if Mr. Bentley keep that odious title, why, 
give it up at once. Don't pray, pray lose money by me. It would 
grieve me far more than it would you. A good many of these are 
about books quite forgotten, as the "Pleader's Guide " (an exquisite 
pleasantry), " Holcroft's Memoirs," and " Richardson's Correspond- 
ence." Much on Darley and the Irish Poets, unknown in England ; 
and I think myself that the book will contain, as in the last article, 
much exquisite poetry and curious prose, as in the forgotten murder 
(of Toole, the author's uncle) in the State Trials. But it should be 
called by its right name, as everything should in this world. Grod 
bless you ! 

Ever faithfully yours, 

M. R. M. ■ 

P. S. First will come the Preface, then the story of the book 
(without Henry Chorley's name ; it is to be dedicated to him), no- 
ticing the coincidence of " Our Village " having first appeared in the 
Lady's Magazine, and saying something hke what I wrote to you 
last night. I think this will take off the danger of provoking ap- 
prehension on one side and disappointment on the other ; because 
after all, although anecdote be not the style of the book, it does 
contain some. 
May I put in the story of "Washington's ghost ? without your 



MISS MITFORD, 293 

name, of course ; it would be very interesting, and I am ten times 
more desirous of making the book as good as I can, since I have 
reason to beHeve you will be interested in it. Pray, forgive me for 
having worried you last night and now again. I am a terribly 
nervous person, and hate and dread literary scrapes, or indeed dis- 
putes of any sort. But I ought not to have worried you. Just tell 
me if you think this sort of preface will take the sting from the 
title, for I dare say Mr. Bentley won't change it. 

Adieu, dear friend. All peace and comfort to you in your jour- 
ney ; amusement you are sure of. I write also to dear Mr. Bennett, 
whom I fear I have also worried. 

Ever most faithfully yours, 

M. R. M. 

1852. 

Januaiy 5. 

Mr. Bennoch has just had the very great kindness, dear Mr. 
Fields, to let me know of your safe arrival at Genoa, and of your 
enjoyment of your journey. Thank God for it ! We heard so 
much about commotions in the South of France that I had become 
fidgety about you, the rather that it is the best who go, and that I 
for one cannot afford to lose you. 

Now let me thank you for all your munificence, — that beautiful 
Longfellow with the hundred illustrations, and that other book of 
Professor Longfellow's, beautiful in another way, the " Golden Le- 
gend." I hope I shall be only one among the multitude who think 
this the greatest and best thing he has done yet, so racy, so full of 
character, of what the French call local color, so, in its best and 
highest sense, original. Moreover, I like the happy ending. 
Then those charming volumes of De Quincey and Sprague and 
Grace Greenwood. (Is that her real name?) And dear Mr. 
Hawthorne, and the two new poets, who, if also young poets, 
will be fi-esh glories for America. How can I thank you enough 
for all these enjoyments ? And you must come back to England, 
and add to my obligations by giving me as much as you can of 
your company in the merry month of May. I have fallen in with 
Mr. Kingsley, and a most charming person he is, certainly the least 
like an Englishman of letters, and the most like an accomplished, 
high-toned English gentleman, that I have ever met with. You 
must know Mr. Kingsley. He is very young too, really young, for 
it is characteristic of our " young poets " that they generally turn 
out middle-aged and very often elderly. My book is out at last, 



294 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

hurried through the press in a fortnight, — a process which half killed 
me, and has left the volumes, no doubt, full of errata, — and you, I 
mean your house, have not got it. I am keeping a copy for you 
personally. People say that they like it. I think you will, because it 
will remind you of this pretty country, and of an old Englishwoman 
who loves you well. Mrs. Browning was delighted with your 
visit. She is a Bonapartiste ; so am I. I always adored the Em- 
peror, and I think his nephew is a great man, full of abiUty, energy, 
and courage, who put an end to an untenable situation and got quit 
of a set of unrepresenting representatives. The Times newspaper, 
right as it seems to me about Kossuth, is dangerously wrong about 
Louis Napoleon, since it is trying to stimulate the nation to a war 
for which France is more than prepared, is ready, and England is 
not. London might be taken with far less trouble and fewer men 
than it took to accomplish the coup d'etat. Ah! I suspect very 
different politics will enclose this wee bit notie, if dear Mr. Bennoch 
contrives to fold it up in a letter of his own ; but to agree to differ 
is part of the privileges of friendsliip ; besides, I think you and I 
generally agree. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

P. S. All this time I have not said a word of " The Wonder 
Book." Thanks again and again. Who was the Mr. Blackstone 
mentioned in "The Scarlet Letter" as riding hke a myth in New 
England History, and what his arms? A grandson of Judge 
Blackstone, a friend of mine, wishes to know. 

(March, 1852.) 
I can never enough thank you, dearest Mr. Fields, for your kind 
recollection of me in such a place as the Eternal City. But you 
never forget any whom you make happy in your friendship, for 
that is the word ; and therefore here in Europe or across the Atlan- 
tic, you will always remain .... Your anecdote of the is 

most characteristic. I am very much afraid that he is only a poet, 
and although I fear the last person in the world to deny that that 
is much, I think that to be a really great man needs something more. 
I am sure that you would not have sympathized with Wordsworth. 
I do hope that you wUl see Beranger when in Paris. He is the one 
man in France (always excepting Louis Napoleon, to whom I con- 
fess the interest that all women feel in strength and courage) whom 
I should earnestly desire to know well. In the first place, I think 
him by far the greatest of living poets, the one who unites most 
completely those two rare things, impulse and finish. In the nex^ 



MTSS MITFOBD. 295 

I admire his admirable independence and consistency, and his gen- 
erous feeling for fallen greatness. Ah, what a truth he told, when 
he said that Napoleon was the greatest poet of modern days I I 
should like to have the description of Beranger from your lips. 
Mrs. Browning .... has made acquaintance with Madame Sand, 
of whom her account is most striking and interesting. But George 
Sand is George Sand, and Beranger is Beranger. 

Thank you, dear friend, for your kind interest in my book. It 
has found far more favor than I expected, and I think, ever since 
the week after its publication, I have received a dozen of letters 
daily about it, from friends and strangers, — mostly strangers, — some 
of very high accomplishments, who will certainly be friends. This 
is encouragement to write again, and we will have a talk about it 
when you come. I should like your advice. One thing is certain, 
that this work has succeeded, and that the people who like it best 
are precisely those whom one wishes to like it best, the lovers of 
literature. Amongst other things, I have received countless volumes 
of poetry and prose, — one little volume of poetry written under the 
name of Mary Maynard, of the greatest beauty, with the vividness 
and picturesqueness of the new school, combined with infinite cor- 
rectness and clearness, that rarest of all merits nowadays. Her 
real name I don't know, she has only thought it right to tell me 
that Mary Maynard was not the true appellation (this is between 
ourselves). Her own family know nothing of the publication, 
which seems to have been suggested by her and my friend, John 
Ruskin. Of course, she must have her probation, but I know of no 
young writer so likely to rival your new American school. I sent 
your gift-books of Hawthorne, yesterday, to the Walters of Bear- 
wood, who had never heard of them I TeU him that I have had the 
honor of poking him into the den of the Times, the only civilized 
place in England where they were barbarous enough not to be 
acquainted with " The Scarlet Letter." I wonder what they '11 
think of it. It will make them stare. They come to see me, 
for it is full two months since I have been in the pony-chaise. 
I was low, if you remember, when you were here, but thought 
myself getting better, was getting better. About Christmas, very 
damp weather came on, or rather very wet weather, and the 
damp seized my knee and ankles and brought back such an 
attack of rheumatism that I cannot stand upright, walk quite 
double, and am often obliged to be lifted from step to step up stairs. 
My medical adviser (a very clever man) says that I shall get much 
better when warm weather comes, but for weeks and weeks we 



296 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

have had east-winds and frost. No violets, no primroses, no token 
of spring. A httle flock of ewes and lambs, with a pretty boy com- 
monly holding a lamb in his arms, who drives his flock to water at 
the pond opposite my window, is the only thing that gives token 
of the season. I am quite mortified at this on your account, for 
April, in general a month of great beauty here, will be as desolate 
as winter. Nevertheless you must come and see me, you and Mr. 
and Mrs. Bennoch, and perhaps ^ou can continue to stay a day or 
two, or to come more than once. I want to see as much of you as 
I can, and I must change much, if I be in any condition to go to 
London, even upon the only condition on which I ever do go, that 
is, into lodgings, for I never stay anywhere ; and if I were to go, 
even to one dear and warm-hearted friend, I should aflfront the very 
many other friends whose invitations I have refused for so many 
years. I hope to get at Mr. Kingsley ; but I have seen little of him 
this winter. We are five miles asunder ; his wife has been ill ; and 
my fear of an open carriage, or rather the medical injunction not to 
enter one, has been a most insuperable objection. We are, as we 
both said, summer neighbors. However, I will try that you should 
see him. He is well worth knowing. Thank you about Mr. Black- 
stone. He is worth knowing too, in a different way, a very learned 
and very clever man (you will find half Dr. Arnold's letters ad- 
dressed to him), as full of crotchets as an egg is fall of meat, fond of 
disputing and contradicting, a clergyman living in the house where 
Mrs. TroUope was raised, and very kind after his own fashion. One 
thing that I should especially like would be that you should see 
your first nightingale amongst our woody lanes. To be sure, these 

winds can never last till then. Mr. is coming here on Sunday. 

He always brings rain or snow, and that will change the weather. 
You are a person who ought to bring sunshine, and I suppose you 
do more than metaphorically ; for I remember that both times I 
have had the happiness to see you — a summer day and a winter 
day — were glorious. Heaven bless you, dear friend I May all the 
pleasure .... return upon your own head ! Even my little world is 
charmed at the prospect of seeing you again. If you come to Read- 
ing by the G-reat Western you could return later and make a longer 
day, and yet be no longer from home. 

Ever faithfully yours, M. R. M. 

SwALLOWPiELD, April 27, 1852. 
How can I thank you half enough, dearest Mr. Fields, for all your 
goodness 1 To write to me the very day after reaching Paris, to 
think of me so kindly ! It is what I never can repay. I write now 



MISS MITFORD. 297 

not to trouble you for another letter, but to remind you that, as 
soon as possible after your return to England, I hope to see you 
and Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch here. Heaven grant the spring may 
come to meet you I At present I am writing in an east-wind, 
which has continued two months and gives no sign of cessation. 
Professor Airy says it will continue five weeks longer. Not a drop 
of rain has fallen in all that time. We have frosts every night, the 
hedges are as bare as at Christmas, flowers forget to blow, or if they 
put forth miserable, infrequent, reluctant blossoms, have no heart, 
and I have only once heard the nightingale in this place where 
they abound, and not yet seen a swallow in the spot which takes 
name from their gatherings. It follows, of course, that the rheuma- 
tism, covered by a glut of wet weather, just upon the coming in of 
the new year, is fifty times increased by the bitter season, — a season 
which has no parallel in my recollection. I can hardly sit down 
when standing, or rise from my chair without assistance, walk quite 
double, and am lifted up stairs step by step by my man-servant. I 
thought, two years ago, I could walk fifteen or sixteen miles a day ! 
0, I was too proud of my activity ! I am sure we are smitten in 
our vanities. However, you will bring the summer, which is, they 
say, to do me good ; and even if that should fail, it will do me some 
good to see you, that is quite certain. Thank you for telling me 
about the Galignani, and about the kind American reception of my 
book ; some one sent me a New York paper (the Tribune, I think), 
full of kindness, and I do assure you that to be so heartily greeted 
by my kinsmen across the Atlantic is very precious to me. From 
the first American has there come nothing but good-will. How- 
ever, the general kindness here has taken me quite by surprise. 
The only fault found was with the title, which, as you know, was 
no doing of mine ; and the number of private letters, books, verses, 
(commendatory verses, as the old poets have it), and tributes of all 
sorts, and from all manner of persons, that I receive every day is 
something quite astonishing. 

Our great portrait-painter, John Lucas, certainly the first painter 
of female portraits now alive, has been down here to take a por- 
trait for engraving. He has been most successfiil. It is looking 
better, I suppose, than I ever do look ; but not better than under 
certain circumstances — listening to a favorite friend, for example — 
I perhaps might look. The picture is to go to-morrow into the 
engraver's hands, and I hope the print will be completed before 
your departure ; also they are engraving, or are about to engrave, a 
miniature taken of me when I was a httle girl between three and 
13* 



298 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. ' 

four years old. They are to be placed side by side, the young child 
and the old withered woman, — a skuU and cross-bones could hardly 
be a more significant memento mori I I have lost my near neighbor 
and most accomplished friend, Sir Henry Russell, and many other 
friends, for Death has been very busy this winter, and Mr. Ware is 
gone ! He had sent me his " Zenobia," " from the author," and for 
that very reason, I suppose, some one had stolen it ; but I had re- 
placed both that and the letters from Rome, and sent them to Mr. 
Kingsley as models for his " Hypatia." He has them still. He had 
never heard of them till I named them to him. They seem to me 
very fine and classical, just like the best translations from some 
great Latin writer. And I have been most struck with Edgar Poe, 
who has been repubhshed, prose and poetry, in a shilling volume 
called " Readable Books." What a deplorable history it was ! — I 
mean his own, — the most unredeemed vice that I have met with in 
the annals of genius. But he was a very remarkable writer, and must 
have a niche if I write again ; so must your two poets, Stoddard 
and Taylor. I am very sorry you missed Mrs. TroUope ; she is a 
most remarkable woman, and you would have liked her, I am sure, 
for her warm heart and her many accomplishments. I had a sure 
way to Beranger, one of my dear friends being a dear friend of his ; 
but on inquiring for him last week, that friend also is gone to 
heaven. Do pick up for me all you can about Louis Napoleon, my 
one real abiding enthusiasm, — the enthusiasm of my whole life, — 
for it began with the Emperor and has passed quite undiminished 
to the present great, bold, and able ruler of France. Mrs. Brown- 
ing shares it, I think ; only she calls herself cool, which I don't ; and 
another still more remarkable co-religionist in the L. IST. faith is old 
Lady Shirley (of Alderley), the writer of that most interesting 
letter to G-ibbon, dated 1792, published by her father. Lord Shef- 
field, in his edition of the great historian's posthumous works. 
She is eighty-two now, and as active and vigorous in body and 
mind, as sixty years ago. 

Make my most affectionate love to my friend in the Avenue des 
Champs Elysees, and believe me ever, my dear Mr. Fields, most 
gratefully and affectionately yours, M. R. M. 

(No date.) 

Ah, my dearest Mr. Fields, how inimitably good and kind you 

are to me ! Your account of Rachel is most delightful, the rather 

that it confirms a preconceived notion which two of my friends had 

taken pains to change. Henry Chorley, not only by his own opin« 



MISS MITFORD. 299 

ion, but by that of Scribe, who told him that there was no compari- 
son between her and Yiardot. Now if Viardot, even in that one 
famous part of Fides, excels Rachel, she must be much the finer 
actress, having the horrible drawback of the music to get over. 
My other fnend told me a story of her, in the modern play of 
Virginie ; she declared that when in her father's arms she pointed to 
the butcher's knife, telling him what to do, and completely reversing 
that loveliest story ; but I hold to your version of her genius, even 
admitting that she did commit the Virginie iniquity, which would 
be intensely characteristic of her calhng, — all actors and actresses 
having a desire to play the whole play themselves, speaking every 
speech, producing every effect in their own person. No doubt she 
is a great actress, and still more assuredly is Louis Napoleon a great 
man, a man of genius, which includes in my mind both sensibility 
and charm. There are little bits of his writing fi-om Ham, one 
where he speaks of " le repos de ma prison," another long and most 
eloquent passage on exile, which ends (I forget the exact words) 
with a sentiment full of truth and sensibility. He is speaking of 
the treatment shown to an exile in a foreign land, of the mistiness 
and coldness of some, of the blandness and smoothness of others, 
and he goes on to say, " He must be a man of ten thousand who 
behaves to an exile just as he would behave to another person." If 
I could trust you to perform a commission for me, and let me pay 
you the money you spent upon it, I would ask you to bring me a 
cheap but comprehensive life of him, with his works and speeches, 
and a portrait as like him as possible. I asked an English friend to 
do this for me, and fancy his sending me a book dated on the out- 
side 1847 ! ! ! ! Did I ever tell you a pretty story of him, when he 
was in England after Strasburg and before Boulogne, and which I 
know to be true ? He spent a twelvemonth at Leamington, living 
in the quietest manner. One of the principal persons there is Mr. 
Hampden, a descendant of John Hampden, and the elder brother of 
the Bishop. Mr. Hampden, himself a very liberal and accomplished 
man, made a point of showing every attention in his power to the 
Prince, and they soon became very intimate. There was in the 
town an old officer of the Emperor's Polish Legion who, compelled 
to leave France after Waterloo, had taken refiige in England, and, 
having the national talent for languages, maintained himself by 
teaching French, Italian, and German in different families. The old 
exile and the young one found each other out, and the language 
master was soon an habitual guest at the Prince's table, and treated 
by him with the most affectionate attention. At last Louis Napo- 



300 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Icon wearied of a country town and repaired to London ; but 
before he went lie called on Mr. Hampden to take leave. After 
warm thanks for all the pleasure he had experienced in his society, 
he said : " I am about to prove to you my entire reliance upon your 
unfailing kindness by leaving you a legacy. I want to ask you to 
transfer to my poor old friend the goodness you have lavished upon 
me. His health is failing, his means are small. Will you call upon 
him sometimes ? and will you see that those lodging-house people 
do not neglect him ? and will you, above all, do for him what hff 
will not do for himself, draw upon me for what may be wanting for 
his needs or for his comforts ? " Mr. Hampden promised. Th^ 
prophecy proved true ; the poor old man grew worse and worse, and 
finally died. Mr. Hampden, as he had promised, replaced the 
Prince in his kind attentions to his old friend, and finally defrayed 
the charges of his illnese and of his funeral. " I would willingly 
have paid them myself," said he, " but I knew that that would have 
offended and grieved the Prince, so I honestly divided the expenses 
with him, and I found that full provision had been made at his 
banker's to answer my drafts to a much larger amount." Now I 
have full faith in such a nature. Let me add that he never forgot 
Mr. Hampden's kindness, sending him his different brochures and 
the kindest messages, both fi-om Ham and the Elysde. If one did 
not admire Louis Napoleon, I should like to know upon whom one 
could, as a pubhc man, fix one's admiration ! Just look at our 
Englisli statesmen I And see the state to which self-government 
brings everything ! Look at London with all its sanitary questions 
just in the same state as ten years ago ; look at all our acts of Par- 
liament, one half of a session passed in amending the mismanage- 
ment of the other. For my own part, I really believe that there is 
nothing like one mind, one wise and good ruler ; and I verily believe 
that the President of France is that man. My only doubt being 
whether the people are worthy of him, fickle as they are, like all 
great masses, — the French people, in particular. By the way, if a 
most vilely translated book, called the " Prisoner of Ham," be extant 
in French, I should hke to possess it. The account of the escape 
looks true, and is most interesting. 

I have been exceedingly struck, since I last wrote to fou, by some 
extracts from Edgar Poe's writings ; I mean a book called " The 
Keadable Library," composed of selections from his works, prose 
and verse. The famous ones are, I find. The Maelstrom and The 
Eaven ; without denying their high merits, I prefer that fine poem 
on The Bells, quite as fine as Schiller's, and those remarkable bit« 
of stories on circumstantial evidence. 



MISS MITFORD. 301 

I am lower, dear friend, than ever, and what is worse, in sup- 
porting myself on my hand I have strained my right side and can 
hardly turn in bed. But if we cannot walk round Swallowfield, 
we can drive, and the very sight of you will do me good. If Mr. 
Bentley send me only one copy of that engraving, it shall be for 
you. You know I have a copy for you of the book. There are no 
words to tell the letters and books I receive about it, so I suppose 
it is popular. I have lost, as you know, my most accomplished and 
admirable neighbor. Sir Henry Russell, the worthy successor of the 
great Lord Clarendon. His eldest daughter is my favorite young 
friend, a most lovely creature, the ideal of a poet. I hope you wiU 
see Beranger. Heaven bless you ! 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

Saturday Night. 

Ah, my very dear friend, how can I ever thank you ? But I don't 
want to thank you. There are some persons (very few, though) to 
whom it is a happiness to be indebted, and you are one of them. 
The books and the busts are arrived. Poor dear Louis Napoleon with 
his head off — Heaven avert the omen ! Of course that head can 
be replaced, I mean stuck on again upon its proper shoulders. Be- 
ranger is a beautiful old man, just what one fancies him and loves 
to fancy him. I hope you saw him. To my mind, he is the very 
greatest poet now ahve, perhaps the greatest man, the truest and 
best type of perfect independence. Thanks a thousand and a 
thousand times for those charming busts and for the books. Mrs. 
Browning had mentioned to me Mr. Read. If I live to write an- 
other book, I shall put him and Mr. Taylor and Mr. Stoddard to- 
gether, and try to do justice to Poe. I have a good right to love 
America and the Americans. My Mr. Lucas tells me to go, and 
iays he has a mind to go. I want you to know John Lucas, not 
only the finest portrait-painter, but about the very finest mind that 
I know in the world. He might be .... for talent and manner 
and heart ; and, if you Uke, you shall, when I am dead, have the por- 
trait he has just taken of me. I make the reserve, instead of giv- 
ing it to you now, because it is possible that he might wish (I know 
te does) to paint one for himself, and if I be dead before sitting to 
iiim again, the present one would serve him to copy. Mr. Bentley 
wanted to purchase it, and many have wanted it, but it shall be 
for you. 

Now, my very dear friend, I am afraid that Mr. has said or 

done something that would make you rather come here alone. His 
last letter to me, after a month's silence, was odd. There was no 



302 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

fixing upon line or word ; still it was not like his other letters, and I 

suppose the air of is not genial, and yet dear Mr. Bennoch 

breathes it often ! You must know that I never could have meant 
for one instant to impose him upon you as a companion. Only in 
the autumn there had been a talk of his joining your party. He 

knows Mr. Bennoch He has been very kind and attentive 

to me, and is. I verily believe, an excellent and true-hearted person ; 
and so I was willing that, if all fell out weU, he should have the 
pleasure of your society here, — the rather that I am sometimes so 
poorly, and always so helpless now, that one who knows the place 
might be of use. But to think that for one moment I would make 
your time or your wishes bend to his is out of the question. Come 
at your own time, as soon and as often as you can. I should say 
this to any one going away three thousand miles oflf, much more to 
you, and forgive my having even hinted at his coming too. I only 
did it thinking it might fix you and suit you. In this view I 
wrote to him yesterday, to tell him that on Wednesday next there 
would be a cricket-match at Bramshill, one of the finest old man- 
sions in England, a Tudor Manor House, altered by Inigo Jones, 
and formerly the residence of Prince Henry, the elder son of James 
the First. In the grand old park belonging to that grand old place, 
there will be on that afternoon a cricket-match. I thought you 
would like to see our national game in a scene so perfectly well 
adapted to show it to advantage. Being in Mr. Kingsley's parish, 
and he very intimate with the owner, it is most likely, too, that he 
will be there ; so that altogether it seemed to me something that 
you and dear Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch might like to see. My poor 
httle pony could take you from hence , but not to fetch or carry 
you, and if the dear Bennochs come, it would be advisable to let 
the flymen know the place of destination, because, Sir William 
Cope being a new-comer, I am not sure whether he (like his pre- 
decessor, whom I knew) allows horses and carriages to be put up 
there. I should like you to look on for half an hour at a cricket- 
match in Bramshill Park, and to be with you at a scene so English 
and so beautiful. We could dine here afterwards, the Great Wes- 
tern allowing till a quarter before nine in the evening. Contrive 
this if you can, and let me know by return of post, and forgive my 

mal addresse about Mr. , There certainly has something come 

across him, — not about you, but about me; one thing is, I think, 
his extreme politics. I always find these violent Radicals very un- 
willing to allow in others the unlimited freedom of thought that 
they claim for themselves. He can't forgive my love for the Presi- 



MISS MITFORD. 303 

dent. Now I must tell you a story I know to be true. A lady of 
rank was placed next the Prince a year or two ago. He was very- 
gentle and courteous, but very silent, and she wanted to make him 
talk. At last she remembered that, having been in Switzerland 
twenty years before, she had received some kindness from the 
Queen Hortense, and had spent a day at Arenenburg. She told 
him so, speaking with warm admiration of the Queen. " Ah, ma- 
dame, vous avez connu ma mere ! " exclaimed Louis Napoleon, turn- 
ing to her eagerly and talking of the place and the people as a 
school-boy talks of home. She spent some months in Paris, receiv- 
ing from the Prince every attention which his position enabled him 
to show ; and when she thanked him for such kindness, his answer 
was always : " Ah, madame, vous avez connu ma mere ! " Is it in 
woman's heart not to love such a man ? And then look at the pur- 
chase of the Murillo the other day, and the thousand really great 

things that he is doing. Mr. is a goose. 

I send this letter to the post to-morrow, when I send other letters, 
— a vile, puritanical post-oflfice arrangement not permitting us to 
send letters in the afternoon, unless we send straight to Reading 
(six miles) on purpose, — so perhaps this may cross an answer from 

Mr. or from you about Bramshill ; perhaps, on the other hand, 

I may have to write again. At all events, you will understand that 
this is written on Saturday night. God bless you, my very dear and 
kind friend. 

Ever faithfully yours, M. R. M. 

May 24, 1852. 
Ah, dearest Mr. Fields, how much too good and kind you are to 
me always !....! wish I were better, that I might go to town 
and see more of you ; but I am more lame than ever, and having, in 
my weight and my shortness and my extreme helplessness, caught 
at tables and chairs and dragged myself along that fashion, I have 
now so strained the upper part of the body that I cannot turn in 
bed, and am fiill of muscular pains which are worse than the rheu- 
matism and more disabling, so that I seem to cumber the earth. 
They say that summer, when it comes, wiU do me good. How 
much more sure that the sight of you will do me good, and I trust 
that, when your business will let you, you will give me that happi- 
ness. In the mean while will you take the trouble to send the en- 
closed and my answer, if it be fit and proper and properly addressed ? 
I give you this office, because real'y the kmdness seems so large 
and unlimited, that, if the letter had not come enclosed in one from 



304 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Mr. Kenyon, one could hardly have believed it to be serious, and 
yet I am well used to kindness, too. I thank over and over again 
your glorious poets for their kindness, and tell Mr. Hawthorne I 
shall prize a letter from him beyond all the worlds one has to give. 
I rejoice to hear of the new work, and can answer for its excel- 
lence. 

I trust that the English edition of Dr. Holmes will contain the 
" Astrffia," and the " Morning Visit," and the " Cambridge Address." 
I am not sure, in my secret soul, that I do not prefer him to any 
American poet. Besides his inimitable word-painting, the charity 
is so large and the scale so fine. How kind in you to like my book, 
—some people do like it. I am afraid to tell you what John Rus- 
kin says of it from Venice, and I get letters, from ten to twenty a 
day. You know how little I dreamt of this I Mrs. Trollope has 
sent me a most affectionate letter, bemoaning her Ul-fortune in miss- 
ing you. I thank you for the Galignani edition, and the presiden- 
tial kindness, and all your goodness of every sort. I have nothing 
to give you but as large a share of my poor affection as I think any 
human being has. You know a copy of the book from me has 
been waiting for you these three months. Adieu, my dear friend. 
Ever yours, 

M. R. M. 

(July 6, 1852.) Monday Night, or, rather, 2 o'clock Tuesday Morning. 
Having just finished Mr. Hawthorne's book, dear Mr. Fields, I 

shall get K to put it up and direct it so that it may be ready the 

first time Sam has occasion to go to Reading, at -which time this 
letter will be put in the post ; so that when you resid this, you may 
be assured that the precious volumes are arrived at the Paddington 
Station, whence I hope they may be immediately transmitted to 
you. If not, send for them. They will have your full direction, 
carriage paid. I say this, because the much vaunted Grreat "Western 
is like all other railways, most uncertain and irregular, and we have 
lost a packet of plants this very week, sent to us, announced by let- 
ter and never arrived. Thank you heartily for the perusal of the 
book. I shall not name it in a letter which I mean to enclose to 
Mr. Hawthorne, not knowing that you mean to tell him, and having 
plenty of other things to say to him besides. To you, and only to 
you, I shall speak quite frankly what I think. It is fiiU of beauty 

and of power, but I agree with that it would not have made 

a reputation as the other two books did, and I have some doubts 
whether it will not be a disappointment, but one that will soon be 



MISS MITFORD. 305 

redeemed by a fresh and happier effort. It seems to me too long, 
too slow, and the personages are to my mind ill chosen. Zenobia 
puts one in mind of Fanny Wright and Margaret Fuller and other 
unsexed authorities, and Hollingsworth will, I fear, recall, to Eng- 
lish people at least, a most horrible man who went about preaching 
peace. I heard him lecture once, and shall never forget his pre- 
sumption, his ignorance, or his vulgarity. He is said to know many 
languages. I can answer for his not knowing his own, for I never, 
even upon the platform, the native home of bad English, heard so 
much in so short a time. The mesmeric lecturer and the sickly girl 
are almost equally disagreeable. In short, the only likeable person 
in the book is honest Silas Foster, who alone gives one the notion 
of a man of flesh and blood. In my mind, dear Mr. Hawthorne 
mistakes exceedingly when he thinks that fiction should be based 
upon, or rather seen through, some ideal medium. The greatest 
fictions of the world are the truest. Look at the " Vicar of Wake- 
field," look at the " Simple Story," look at Scott, look at Jane Aus- 
ten, greater because truer than all, look at the best works of your 
own Cooper. It is precisely the want of reality in his smaller 
stories wliich has delayed Mr. Hawthorne's fame so long, and will 
prevent its extension if he do not resolutely throw himself into 
truth, which is as great a thing in my mind in art as in morals, the 
foundation of all excellence in both. The fine parts of this book, at 
least the finest, are the truest, — that magnificent search for the body, 
which is as perfect as the search for the exciseman in Guy Man- 
nering, and the burst of passion in Eliot's pulpit. The plot, too, is 
very finely constructed, and doubtless I have been a too critical 
reader, because, from the moment you and I parted, I have been 
Buffering from fever, and have never left the bed, in which I am now 
writing. Don't fancy, dear friend, that you had anything to do 
with this. The complaint had fixed itself and would have run its 
course, even although your .... society has not roused and ex- 
cited the good spirits, which will, I think, fail only with my life. 
I think I am going to get better. Love to all. 

Ever most affectionately yours, M. R. M. 

Tuesday. (No date.) 

My dear Friend : Being fit for nothing but lying in bed and 
reading novels, I have just finished Mr. Field's and Mr. Jones's 
"Adrien," and as you certainly will not have time to look at it, and 
may like to hear my opinion, I will tell it to you. Mr. Field, from 
the Preface, is of New York. The thing that has diverted me most 

T 



3o6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

is the love-plot of the book. A young gentleman, whose father 
came and settled in America and made a competence there, is third 
or fourth cousin to an English lord. He falls in love with a fish- 
erman's daughter (the story appears to be about fifty years back). 
This fisherman's daughter is a most ethereal personage, speaking 
and reading Italian, and possessing in the fishing-cottage a piano- 
forte and a collection of books ; nevertheless, she one day hears her 
husband say something about a person being " well born and well 
bred," and forthwith goes away from him, in order to set him 
free from the misery entailed upon him, as she supposes, by a 
disproportionate marriage. Is not this curious in your repub- 
lic ? We in England certainly should not play such pranks. A 
man having married a wife, his wife stays by him. This di- 
lemma is got over by the fisherman's turning out to be him- 
self fifth or sixth cousin of another English lord. But, having 
lived really as a fisherman ever since his daughter's birth, he 
knew nothing of his aristocratic descent. I think this is the most 
remarkable thing in the book. There are certain flings at the New 
England character (the scene is laid beside the waters of your Bay) 
which seem to foretell a not very remote migration on the part of 
Mr. Jones, though they may come from his partner ; nothing very 
bad, only such hits as this : " He was simple, humble, affectionate, 
three qualities rare anywhere, but perhaps more rare in that part of 
the world than anywhere else." For the rest the book is far inferior 
to the best even of Mr. James's recent productions, such as " Henry 
Smeaton." These two authors speak of the corpse of a drowned 
man as beautified by death, and retaining all the look of life. Tou 
remember what Mr. Hawthorne says of the appearance of his 
drowned heroine, — which is right ? I have had the most delight- 
ful letter possible (you shall see it when you come) from dear Dr. 
Holmes, and venture to trouble you with the enclosed answer. 
Yesterday, Mr. Harness, who had heard a bad account of me (for I 
have been very iU, and, although much better now, I gather fi-om 
everybody that I am thought to be breaking down fast), so like the 
dear kind old friend that he is, came to see me. It was a great pleas- 
ure. We talked much of you, and I think he will call upon you. 
Whether he call or not, do go to see him. He is fully prepared for 
you as Mr. Dyce's friend and Mr. Eogers's friend, and my very dear 
friend. Do go ; you will find him charming, so different fi-om the 
author people that Mr. Kenyon collects. I am sure of your Hking 
each other. Surely by next week I may be well enough to see 
you. You and Mrs. W would do me nothing but good. Say 



MISS MITFORD. 307 

everything to her, and to our dear kind friends, the Bennochs. I 
ought to have written to them, but I get as much scolded for writ- 
ing as talking. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

(No date.) 

How good and kind you are to me, dearest Mr. Fields ! kindest 
of all, I think, in writing me those .... One comfort is, that if 
London lose you this year I do think you will not suffer many to 
elapse before revisiting it. Ah, you will hardly find your poor old 
friend next time I Not that I expect to die just now, but there is 
such a want of strength, of the power that shakes off disease, which 
is no good sign for the constitution. Yesterday I got up for a little 
while, for the first time since I saw you ; but, having let in too 
many people, the fever came on again at night, and I am only just 
now shaking off the attack, and feel that I must submit to perfect 
quietness for the present. Still the attack was less violent than the 
last, and unattended by sickness, so that I am really better and hope 
in a week or so to be able to get out with you under the trees, per- 
haps as far as Upton. 

One of my yesterday's visitors was a glorious old lady of seventy- 
six, who has lived in Paris for the last thirty years, and I do be- 
lieve came to England very much for the purpose of seeing me. 
She had known my father before his marriage. He had taken her 
in his hand (he was always fond of children) one day to see my 
mother ; she had been present at their wedding, and remembered the 
old housekeeper and the pretty nursery-maid and the great dog too, 
and had won with great difficulty (she being then eleven years old) 
the privilege of having the baby to hold. Her descriptions of all 
these things and places were most graphic, and you may imagine 
how much she must have been struck with my book when it met 
ier eye in Paris, and how much I (knowing all about her family) 
was struck on my part by all these details, given with the spirit 
and fire of an enthusiastic woman of twenty. We had certainly 
never met. I left Alresford at three years old. She made an 
appointment to spend a day here next year, having with her a 
daughter, apparently by a first husband. Also she had the same 
host of recollections of Louis Napoleon, remembered the Emperor, 
as Premier Consul, and La Reine Hortense as MUe. de Beau- 
hamais. Her account of the Prince is favorable. She says that 
it is a most real popularity, and that, if anything like durability 
can ever be predicated of the French, it will prove a lasting one. 



3o8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

I had a letter from Mrs. Browning to-day, talking of the " Facts 
of the Times," of which she said some gentlemen were speaking 
with the same supreme contempt and disbelief that I profess 
for every paragraph in that collection of falsehoods. For my own 
part, I hold a wise despotism, like the Prince President's, the only 
rule to live under. Only look at the figure our soi-disant states- 
men cut, — Whig and Tory, — and then glance your eye across 
the Atlantic to your " own dear people," as Dr. Holmes says, and 
their doings in the Presidential line. Apropos to Dr. Holmes, 

you '11 see him read and quoted when and his doings are 

as dead as Henry the Eighth. has no feeling for finish or 

polish or delicacy, and doubtless dismisses Pope and Goldsmith with 
supreme contempt. She never mentions that horrid trial, to my 
great comfort. Did I tell you that I had been reading Louis Napo- 
leon's most charming three volumes full ? 

Among my visitors yesterday was Miss Percy, the heiress of 
Guy's Cliff, one of the richest in England, and, what is odd, the 
translator of " Emilie Carlen's Birthright," the only Swedish novel 
I have ever got fairly through, because Miss Percy really does her 
work well, and I can't read 's English. Miss Percy, who, be- 
sides being very clever and agreeable, is also pretty, has refused 
some scores of offers, and declares she '11 never marry; she has a 
dread of being sought for her money 

God bless you, dearest, kindest fi:iend. Say everything for me 
to your companions. 

Ever most faithfiilly yours, M. R. M. 

(No date.) 
Yes, dearest Mr. Fields, I continue to get better and better, and 

shall be dehghted to see you and Mr. and Mrs. W on Friday. 

I even went in to surprise Mr. May on Saturday, so, weather per- 
mitting, we shall get up to IJpton together. I want you to see that 
reUque of Protestant bigotry. No doubt many of my dear country- 
men would play just the same pranks now, if the spirit of the age 
would permit ; the will is not wanting, witness our courts of law. 

I have been reading the " Life of Margaret Fuller." What a tragedy 
from first to last ! She must have been odious in Boston in spite 
of her power and her strong sense of duty, with which I always 
sympathize ; but at New York, where she dwindled from a sibyl to 
a "Uonne," one begins to like her better, and in England and 
Paris, where she was not even that, better still ; so that one is pre- 
pared for the deep interest of the last half-volume. Of course her ex- 



MISS MITFORB. 309 

ample must have done much injury to the girls of her train. Of 
course, also, she is the Zenobia of dear Mr. Hawthorne. One won- 
ders what her book would have been like. 

Mr. Bennett has sent me the " Nile Notes." "We must talk about 
that, which I have not read yet, not delighting much in Eastern 
travels, or, rather, being tired of them. Ah, how sad it wiU be when 
I cannot say " We will talk " ! Surely Mr. Webster does not mean 
to get up a dispute with England ! That would be an affliction ; 
for what nations should be friends if ours should not ? What our 
ministers mean, nobody can tell, — hardly, I suppose, themselves. 
My hope was in Mr. Webster. Well, this is for talking. G-od bless 
you, dear friend. 

Ever most affectionately yours, M. R. M. 

August 7, 1852. 
Hurrah 1 dear and kind friend, I have found the line without any 
other person's aid or suggestion. Last night it occurred to me that 
it was in some prologue or epilogue, and my little book-room being 
very rich in the drama, I have looked through many hundreds of 
those bits of rhyme, and at last made a discovery which, if it have 
no other good effect, will at least have '' emptied my head of Cor- 
sica, " as Johnson said to BosweU ; for never was the great biog- 
rapher more haunted by the thought of Paoli than I by that line- 
It occurs in an epilogue by G-arrick on quitting the stage, June, 
1776, when the performance was for the benefit of sick and aged 
actors. 

A veteran see ! whose last act on the stage 

Entreats your smiles for sickness and for age ; 

Their cause I plead, plead it in heart and mind, 

A yellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.'^ 

Not finding it quoted in Johnson convinced me that it would 
probably have been written after the publication of the Dictionary, 
and ultimately guided me to the right place. It is singular that 
epilogues were just dismissed at the first representation of one of 
my plays, " Foscari," and prologues at another, " Rienzi." 

I have but a moment to answer your most kind letter, because I 
have been engaged with company, or rather interrupted by com- 
pany, ever since I got up, but you will pardon me. Nothing ever 
did me so much good as your visit. My only comfort is the hope 
of your return in the spring. Then I hope to be well enough to 
show Mr Hawthorne all the holes and corners my own self Tell 
him so. I am already about to study the State Trials, and make 



3IO YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

myself perfect in all that can assist the romance. It will be a labor 
of love to do for him the small and humble part of collecting facts 
and books, and making ready the palette for the great painter. 

Talking of artists, one was here on Sunday who was going to 
Upton yesterday. His object was to sketch every place mentioned 
in my book. Many of the places (as those round Taplow) he had 

taken, and K says he took this house and the stick and Fan- 

chon and probably herself. I was unluckily gone to take home the 
dear visitors who cheer me daily and whom I so wish you to see. 

God bless you all, dear friends. 

Ever most affectionately yours, M. R. M. 

SwALLOwnEiD, September 24, 1852. 

My very dear Mr. Fields : I am beginning to get very fidgety 
about you, and thinking rather too often, not only of the breadth of 
the Atlantic, but of its dangers. However I must hear soon, and I 
write now because I am expecting a fellow-tovrasman of yours, Mr. 
Thompson, an American artist, who expected to find you still in 
England, and who is welcomed, as I suppose all Boston would be 
People do not love you the less, dear friend, for missing you. 

I write to you this morning, because I have something to say 
and something to ask. In the first place, I am better. Mr. Har- 
ness, who, God bless him, left that Temple of Art, the Deepdene, 
and Mr. Hope's delightful conversation, to come and take care of 
me, stayed at Swallowfield three weeks. He found out a tidy lodg- 
ing, which he has retained, and he promises to come back in No- 
vember ; at present he is again at the Deepdene. Nothing could be 
so judicious as his way of going on ; he came at two o'clock to my 
cottage and we drove out together ; then he went to his lodgings to 
dinner, to give me three hours of perfect quiet ; at eight he and 
the RusseUs met here to tea, and he read Shakespeare (there is no 
such reader in the world) till bedtime. Under his treatment no 
wonder that I improved, but the low-fever is not far oflF; doing a 
little too much, I fell back even before his departure, and have been 
worse since. However, on the whole, I am much better. 

Now to my request. You perhaps remember my speaking to 
you of a copy of my " Recollections," which was in course of illus- 
tration in the winter. Mr. Holloway, a great print-seller of Bedford 
Street, Covent Garden, has been engaged upon it ever since, and 
brought me the first volume to look at on Tuesday. It would have 
rejoiced the soul of dear Dr. Hohnes. My book is to be set into six 
or seven or eight volumes, quarto, as the case may be ; and although 



MISS MITFORD. 311 

not unfamiliar with the luxuries of the library, I could not have 
believed in the number and richness of the pearls which have been 
strung upon so slender a thread. The rarest and finest portraits, often 
many of one person and always the choicest and the best, — ranging 
from magnificent heads of the great old poets, from the Charleses 
and Cromwells, to Sprat and George Faulkner of Dublin, of whom 
it was thought none existed, until this print turned up unexpectedly 
in a supplementary volume of Lord Chesterfield ; notloing is too odd 
for Mr. HoUoway. There is a colored print of George the Third, — a 
full length which really brings the old king to life again, so striking 
is the resemblance, and quantities of theatrical people, Munden and 
Elhston and the Kembles. There are two portraits of "glorious 
John " in Penruddock. Then the curious old prints of old houses. 
They have not only one two hundred years old of Dorrington 
Castle, but the actual drawing from which that engraving was 
made ; and they are rich beyond anything in exquisite drawings of 
scenery by modem artists sent on purpose to the different spots 
mentioned. Besides which there are all sorts of characteristic 
autographs (a capital one of Pope) ; in short, nothing is wanting 
that the most uidimited expense (Mr. Holloway told me that his 
employer, a great city merchant of unbounded riches, constantly 
urged him to spare no expense to procure everything that money 
would buy), added to taste, skill, and experience, could accomplish. 
Of course the number of proper names and names of places have 
been one motive for conferring upon my book an honor of which I 
never dreamt ; but there is, besides, an enthusiasm for my writings 
on the part of Mrs. Dillon, the lady of the possessor, for whom it is 
destined as a birthday gift. Now what I have to ask of you is to 
procure for Mr. Holloway as many autographs and portraits as you 
can of the American writers whom I have named, — dear Dr. Holmes, 
Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Prescott, Ticknor. If any of 
them would add a line or two of their writing to their names, it 
would be a favor, and if, being about it, they would send two other 
plain autographs, for I have heard of two other copies in course of 
illustration, and expect to be applied to by their proprietors every 
day. Mr. Holloway wrote to some trade connection in Philadelphia,, 
but probably because he applied to the wrong place and the wrong 
person, and because he limited his correspondent to time, obtained 
no results. If there be a print of Professor Longfellow's house, so. 
much the better, or any other autographs of Americans named in 
my book. Forgive this trouble, dear friend. You wiU probably 
see the work when you come to London in the spring, and then 



312 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

you will understand the interest that I take in it as a great book of 
art. Also my dear old friend, Lady Morley (Gibbon's correspond- 
ent), who at the age of eighty-three is caught by new books and is 
as enthusiastic as a girl, has commissioned me to inquire about 

your new authoress, the writer of , who she is and all about 

her. For my part, I have not finished the book yet, and never 
shall. Besides my own utter dislike to its painfulness, its one- 
sidedness, and its exaggeration, I observe that the sort of popu- 
larity which it has obtained in England, and probably in America, 
is decidedly bad, of the sort which cannot and does not last, — a cry 

which is always essentially one-sided and commonly wrong 

Ever most faithfully and affectionately yours, 

M. E. M. 

October 5, 1852. 

Dearest Mr. Fields : You will think that I persecute you, but 
I find that Mr. Dillon, for whom Mr. Holloway is illustrating 
my Recollections so splendidly, means to send the volumes to the 
binder on the 1st of November. I write therefore to beg, in case 
of your not having yet sent off the American autograplis and por- 
traits, that they may be forwarded direct to Mr. Holloway, 25 Bed- 
ford Street, Covent Garden, London. It is very foohsh not to 
wait until all the materials are collected, but it is meant as an offer- 
ing to Mrs. Dillon, and I suppose there is some anniversary in the 
way. Mr. Dillon is a great lover and preserver of fine engravings ; 
his collection, one of the finest private collections in the world, is 
estimated at sixty thousand pounds. Ho is a friend of dear Mr. 
Bennoch's, who, when I told him the compliment that had been paid 
to my work by a great city man, immediately said it could be 
nobody but Mr. Dillon. I have twice seen Mr. Bennoch within the 
last ten days, once with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thompson, your own 
Boston artist, whom I liked much, and who gave me the great 

pleasure of talking of you and of dear Mr. and Mrs. W , last 

time with his own good and charming wife and . Only think of 

's saying that Shakespeare, if he had lived now, would have been 

thought nothing of, and this rather as a compliment to the age than 
not ! But, if you remember, he printed amended words to the air 
of " Drink to me only." Ah, dear me, I suspect that both "William 
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson will survive him ; don't you ? Never- 
theless he is better than might be predicated from that observation. 

AU my domestic news is bad enough. My poor pretty pony 
keeps his bed in the stable, with a violent attack of influenza, and 



MISS MITFORD. 313 

Sam and Fanchon spend three parts of their time in nursing him. 
Moreover we have had such rains here that the Lodden has over- 
flovfed its banks, and is now covering the water meadows, and 
almost covering the lower parts of the lanes. Adieu, dearest friend. 
Ever most faithfully yours, M. R. M. 

SwALLOWFiELD, October 13, 1852. 

More than one letter of mine, dearest friend, crossed yours, for 
which I cannot sufficiently thank you. Nobody can better under- 
stand than I do, how very, very glad your own people, and all the 
good city, must feel to get you back again, — I trust not to keep ; 
for in spite of sea-sickness, that misery which during the summer I 
have contrived to feel on land, I still hope that we shall have you 
here again in the spring. I am impatiently waiting the arrival of 
portraits and autographs, and if they do not come in time to bind, 
I shall charge Mr. Holloway to contrive that they may be pasted 
with the copy of my Recollections to which Mr, Dillon is paying so 
high and so costly a compliment. Now I must tell you some news. 

First let me say that there is an admirable criticism in one of the 
numbers of the Nonconformist, edited by Edward Miall, one of 
the new members of Parliament, and certainly the most able of the 
dissenting organs, on our favorite poet. Dr. Holmes. Also I have 
a letter from Dr. Robert Dickson, of Hertford Street, May Fair, 
one of the highest and most fashionable London physicians, re- 
specting my book, liking Dr. Holmes better than anybody for 
the very qualities for which he would himself choose to be pre- 
ferred, originality and justness of thought, admirable fineness and 
propriety of diction, and a power of painting by words, very rare 
in any age, and rarest of the rare in this, when vagueness and 
obscurity mar so much that is high and pure. I shall keep this 
letter to show Dr. Holmes, tell him with my affectionate love. If it 
were not written on the thickest paper ever seen, and as huge aa 
it is thick, I would send it ; but I '11 keep it for him against he comes 
to claim it. The description of spring is. Dr. Dickson says, remark- 
able for originality and truth. He thanks me for those poems of 
Dr. Holmes as if I had written them. Now be free to tell him all 
this. Of course you have told Mr. Hawthorne of the highly eulogis- 
tic critique on the " Blithedale Romance " in the Times, written, I 
believe, by Mr. Willmott, to whom I lent the veritable copy received 
from the author. Another thing let me say, that I have been read* 
ing with the greatest pleasure some letters on African trees copied 
from the New York Tribune into Bentley's Miscellany, and no 
14 



314 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

doubt by Mr. Bayard Taylor. Our chief London news is that Mrs. 
Browning's cough came on so violently, in consequence of the 
sudden setting in of cold weather, that they are off for a week or 
two to Paris, then to Florence, Rome, and Naples, and back here 
in the summer. Her father still refuses to open a letter or to hear 
her name. Mrs. Southey, suffering also from chest-complaint, has 
shut herself up till June. Poor Anne Hatton, who was betrothed 
to Thomas Davis, and was supposed to be in a consumption, is 
recovering, they say, under the advice of a clairvoyante. Most 
likely a broken vessel has healed on the lungs, or perhaps an 
abscess. Be what it may, the consequence is happy, for she is a 
lovely creature and the only joy of a fond mother. Alfred Tenny- 
son's boy was christened the other day by the name of Hallam 
Tennyson, Mr. Hallam standing to it in person. This is just as it 
should be on all sides, only that Arthur Hallam would have been a 
prettier name. You know that Arthur Hallam was the lost friend 
of the " In Memoriam," and engaged to Tennyson's sister, and that 
after his death, and even after her marrying another man, Mr. 
Hallam makes her a large allowance. 

We have just escaped a signal misfortune ; my dear pretty pony 
has been upon the point of death with influenza. Would not you 
have been sorry if that pony had died ? He has, however, recovered 
under Sam's care and skill, and the first symptom of convalescence 
was his neighing to Sam through the window. You will have 
found out that I too am better. I trust to be stronger when you 
come again, well enough to introduce you to Mr. Harness, whom 
we are expecting here next month. G-od bless you, my dear and 
kind friend. I send this through dear Mr. Bennoch, whom I like 
better and better ; so I do Mrs. Bennoch, and everybody who knows 
and loves you. Ever, my dear Mr. Fields, 

Your faithful and affectionate friend, M. R. M. 

P. S. — October 17. I have kept this letter open till now, and I 
am glad I did so. Acting upon the hint you gave of Mr. De 
Quincey's kind feeUng, I wrote to him, and yesterday I had a 
charming letter from his daughter, saying how much her father was 
gratified by mine, that he had already written an answer, amounting 
to a good-sized pamphlet, but that when it would be finished was 
doubtful, so she sent hers as a precursor. 

SwAiiowFiEU), November 11, 18511 

I write, dearest friend, and although the packet which you had 
the infinite goodness to send, has not reached me yet, and may not 




-a \T! 'N 



^^lur^ycy ^^c^J^^^^^^'pu^, 



MISS MITFORD. 315 

possibly before my letter goes, — so uncertain is our railway, — yet 
I will write because our excellent friend, Mr. Bennoch, says that he 
has sent it off. .... You will understand that I am even more 
obliged by your goodness about Mr. Dillon's book than by any of 
the thousand obligations to myself only. Besides my personal in- 
terest, as so great a compliment to my own work, Mr. Dillon ap- 
pears to be a most interesting person. He is a friend of Mr. Ben- 
noch's, from whom I had his history, one most honorable to him, 
and he has written to me since I wrote to you and proposes to 
come and see me. You must see him when you come to England, 
and must see his collection of engravings. Would not dear Dr. 
Holmes have a sympathy with Mr. Dillon ? Have you such fancies 
in America ? They are not common even here ; but Miss Skerrett 
(the Queen's factotum) tells me that the most remarkable book in 
Windsor Castle is a De Grammont most richly and expensively il- 
lustrated by George the Fourth, who, with all his sins as a monarch, 
was the only sovereign since the Stuarts of any literary taste. 

Here is your packet ! my dear, dear friend, how shall I thank 
you half enough ! I shall send the parcels to-morrow morning, ihe 
very first thing, to Mr. HoUoway. The work is at the binder's, but 
fly-leaves have been left for the American packet of which I felt so 
sure, although even I could hardly foresee its value. One or two 
duplicates I have kept. Tell Mr. Hawthorne that I shall make a' 
dozen people rich and happy by his autograph, and tell Dr. Holmes 
I could not find it in my heart to part with the " Mary " stanza. 
Never was a writer who possessed more perfectly the art of doing 
great things greatly and small things gracefully. Love to Mr. Haw 
thorne and to him. 

Poor Daniel Webster I or rather poor America ! Rich as she is, 
she cannot afford the loss, the greatest the world has known since 
our Sir Robert. But what a death-bed, and what a funeral ! How 
noble an end of that noble life I I feel it tlie more, hearing and 
reading so much about the Duke's funeral, which by dint of the de- 
lay will not cause the slightest real feeling, but will be attended 
just like every show, and yet as a show will be gloomy and poor. 
How much better to have laid him simply here at Strathfieldsaye, 
and left it as a place of pilgrimage, — as Strathfield will be, — although 
between the two men, in my mind, there was no comparison ; the 
one was a genius, the other mere soldier, — pure physical force 
measured with intellect the richest and the proudest. I have twenty 
letters speaking of him as one of the greatest among the statesmen 
of the age. The Times only refuses to do him justice. But when 



3i6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

did the Times do justice to any one ? Look how it talks of our 
Emperor. 

Your friend Bayard Taylor came to see me a fortnight ago, just 
before he sailed on his tour round the world. I told him the first 
of Bentley 's reprinting his letters from the New York Tribune ; he 
had not heard a word of it. He seemed an admirable person, and it 
is good to have such travellers to follow with one's heart and one's 
earnest good wishes. 

Also I have had two packets, — one from Mrs. Sparks, with a nice 
letter, and some fresh and glorious autumnal flowers, and a collection 
of autumn leaves from your glorious forests. I have written to 
thank her. She seems full of heart, and she says that she drove 
into Boston on purpose to see you, but missed you. When you do 
meet, tell me about her. Also, I have through you, dear friend, a 
most interesting book from Mr. Ware. To him, also, I have writ- 
ten, but teU him how much I feel and prize his kindness, aU the 

more welcome for coming from a kinsman of dear Mrs. W . 

Tell her and her excellent husband that they cannot think of us 
oftener or more warmly than we think of them. 0, how I should 
like to visit you at Boston I But I should have your malady by the 
way, and not your strength to stand it. ... . 

God bless you, my dear and excellent friend I I seem to have a 
thousand things to say to you, but the post is going, and a whole 
sheet of paper would not hold my thanks. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

SwALLOWFiEij), November 25, 1862. 

My dear Friend : Your most kind and welcome letter arrived 
to-day, two days after the papers, for which I thank you much. 
Still more do I tiiank you for that kind and charming letter, and 
for its enclosures. The anonymous poem [it was by Dr. T. W. Par- 
sons] is far finer than anything that has been written on the death 
of the Duke of WeUington, as indeed it was a far finer subject. 
May I inquire the name of the writer ? Mr. Everett's speech also 
is superb, and how very much I prefer the Marshfield funeral in its 
sublime simplicity to the tawdry pageantry here ! I have had fifty 
letters from persons who saw the funeral in St. Paul's, and seen as 
many who saw that or the procession, and it is strange that the 
papers have omitted alike the great successes and the great failures. 
My young neighbor, a captain in the Grenadier Guards (the Duke's 
regiment), saw the uncovering the car which had been hidden by 
the drapery, and was to have been a great effect, and he says it was 
exactly what is sometimes seen in a theatre when one scene i^ 



-MISS MITFORD. 317 

drawn up too soon and the other is not ready. Carpenters and 
undertaker's men were on all parts of the car, and the draperies and 
ornaments were everywhere but in their places. Again, the pro- 
cession waited upwards of an hour at the cathedral door, because 
the same people had made no provision for taking the coffin from 
the car ; again, the sunlight was let into St. Paul's, mingling most 
discordantly with the gas, and the naked wood of screens and 
benches and board beams disfigured the grand entrance. In three 
months' interval they had not time 1 On the other hand, the strong 
points were the music, the effect of which is said to have been un- 
rivalled ; the actual performance of the service, — my friend Dean 
Milman is renowned for his manner of reading the funeral service, 
he officiated at the burial of Mrs. Lockhart (Sir Walter's favorite 
daughter), — and none who were present could speak of it with- 
out tears ; the clerical part of the procession, which was a real and 
visible mourning pageant in its flowing robes of white with black 
bands and sashes ; the living branches of laurel and cypress amongst 
the mere finery ; and, above all, the hushed silence of the people, 
always most and best impressed by anything that appeals to the 
imagination or the heart. 

I suppose you wiU have seen how England is flooded, and you 
will like to hear that this tiny speck has escaped. The Lodden is 
over the park, and turns the beautiftil water meadows down to 
Strathfieldsaye into a no less beautiful lake, two or three times a 
week ; but then it subsides as quickly as it rises, so there is none of 
the lying under water which results in all sorts of pestilential ex- 
halations, and this cottage is lifted out of every bad influence, nay, 
a kind neighbor having had my lane scraped, I walk dry-shod every 
afternoon a mile and a half, which is more than I ever expected to 
compass again, and for which I am most thankful. But we have had 

our own troubles. K has lost her father. He was seized with 

paralysis and knew nobody, so they desired her not to come, and 
Sam went alone to the funeral. After all, this is her home, and she 
has pretty well got over her affliction, and the pony is well again, 
and strong enough to draw you and me in the spring, — for I am 
looking forward to good and happy days again when you shall re- 
turn to England. 

Your magnificent present for Mr. Dillon's book was quite in 
time, dear friend. I had warned them to leave room, and Mr. Hol- 
loway and the binders contrived it admirably. They are most 
grateful for your kindness, and most gratefully shall I receive the 
promised volumes. I have not yet got " the pamphlet," and am 



3i8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

much afraid it is buried in what Miss De Quincey calls her " father's 
chaos " ; but I have charming letters from her, and am heartily glad 
that I wrote. You have the way (like Mr. Bennoch) of making 
friends still better friends, and bringing together those who, without 
you, would have had no intercourse. It is the very finest of all the fine 
arts. Tell dear Dr. Holmes that the more I hear of him, the more I 
feel how inadequate has been all that I have said to express my 
own feelings; and tell President Sparks that his charming wife 
ought to have received a long letter from me at the same moment 
with yourself. Mr. Hawthorne's new work will be a real treat. 
Tell me if Mr. Bennoch has sent you some stanzas on Ireland, which 
have more of the very highest qualities of Beranger than I have 
ever seen in EngUsh verse. We who love him shall have to be 
very proud of dear Mr. Bennoch. Tell me, too, if our solution of 
the line, "A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind," was the 
first ; and why the new President is at once called General and 
talked of as a civilian. The other President goes on nobly, does 
he not ? 

Say everything for me to dear Mr. and Mrs. W and all 

friends. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

SwAixowFHXD, December 14, 1852. 
O my very dear friend, how much too kind you are to me, who 
have nothing to give you in return but affection and gratitude I Mr. 
Bennett brought me your beautiful book on Saturday, and you may 
think how heartUy we wished that you had been here also. But 
you will come this spring, will you not ? I earnestly hope nothing 
will come in the way of that happiness. Before leaving the subject 
of our good little friend, let me say that, talking over our own best 
authors and your De Quincey (N. B. The pamphlet has not ar- 
rived yet, I fear it is forever buried in De Quincey's " chaos "), — 
talking of these things, we both agreed that there was another 
author, probably little known in America, who would be quite 
worthy of a reprint, William Hazlitt. Is there any complete 
edition of his Lectures and Essays ? I should think they would 
come out well, now that Thackeray is giving his Lectures. I 
know that Charles Lamb and Talfourd thought Hazlitt not only 
the most brilhant, but the soundest of all critics. Then his Life of 
Napoleon is capital, that is, capital for an English life ; the only way 
really to know the great man is to read him in the memoires of his 
own ministers, lieutenants, and servants; for he was a hero to hia 



MISS MITFORD. 319 

valet de chamhre, the greatness was so real that it would bear 
close looking into. And our Emperor I I have just had a letter 
from Osborne, from Marianne Skerrett, describing the arrival of 
Count Walewski under a royal salute to receive the Queen's recog- 
nition of Napoleon III. She, Marianne, says, " How great a man 
that is, and how like a fairy tale the whole story ! " She adds, 
that, seeing much of Louis Philippe, she never could abide him, he 
was so cunning and so false, not cunning enough to hide the false- 
ness ! Were not you charmed with the bits of sentiment and feel- 
ing that come out ah through our hero's Southern progress ? Al- 
ways one finds in him traits of a gracious and graceful nature, far 
too frequent and too spontaneous to be the effect of calculation. It 
is a comfort to find, in spite of our delectable press, ministers are 
wise enough to understand that our pohcy is peace, and not only 
peace but cordiaUty. To quarrel with France would be almost as 
great a sin as to quarrel with America. What a set of fools our 
great ladies are ! I had hoped better things of Lord Carlisle, but to 
find that long list at Stafford House in female parliament assembled, 
echoing the absurdities of Exeter HaU, leaving their own duties and 
the reserve which is the happy privilege of our sex to dictate to a 
great nation on a point which aU the world knows to be its chief 
difficulty, is enough to make one ashamed of the title of English- 
woman. I know a great many of these committee ladies, and in 
most of them I trace that desire to follow the fashion, and concert 
with duchesses, which is one of the besetting sins of the literary 

circles in London. One name did surprise me, , considering 

that one of her husband's happiest bits, in the book of his that will 
live, was the subscription for sending flannel waistcoats to the 
negroes in the West Indies ; and that in this present book a certain 
Mrs. Jellyby is doing just what his wife is doing at Stafford House ! 
Even if I had not had my earnest thanks to send you, I should 
have written this week to beg you to convey a message to Mr. 
Hawthorne. Mr. Chorley writes to me, " You will be interested to 
hear that a Russian literary man of eminence was so much attracted 
to the ' House of the Seven G-ables ' by the review in the Athe- 
n^um, as to have translated it into Russian and published it feuUle- 
tonwise in a newspaper." I know you will have the goodness to 
tell Mr. Hawthorne this, with my love. Mr. Chorley saw the en- 
trance of the Empereur into the Tuileries. He looked radiant. 
The more I read that elegy on the death of Daniel Webster, the 
more I find to admire. It is as grand as a dirge upon an organ. 

Love to the dear W s and to Dr. Holmes. 

Ever, dearest Mr. Fields, most gratefully yours, M. R. M. 



320 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

1853. 

SwALLOwnELD, January 5, 1853. 

Your most welcome letter, my very dear friend, arrived to-day, 
and I write not only to acknowledge that, and your constant kind- 
ness, but because, if, as I believe, Mr. Beunoch has told you of my 
mischance, you will be glad to hear from my own hand that I am 
going on well. Last Monday fortnight I was thrown violently 
from my own pony-chaise upon the hard road in Lady Russell's 
park. No bones were broken, but the nerves of one side were so 
terribly bruised and lacerated, and the shock to the system was so 
great, that even at the end of ten days Mr. May could not satisfy 
himself, ■without a most minute re-examination, that neither fracture 
nor dislocation had taken place, and I am writing to you at this 
moment with my left arm bound tightly to my body and no power 
whatever of raising either foot from the ground. The only parts of 
me that have escaped uninjured are my head and my right hand, 
and this is much. Moreover Mr. May says that, although the cure 
will be tedious, he sees no cause to doubt my recovering altogether 
my former condition, so that we may still hope to drive about tO' 
gether when you come back to England 

I wrote I think, dearest, friend, to thank you heartily for the 
beautiful and interesting book called " The Homes of American 
Authors." How comfortably they are housed, and how glad I am 
to find that, owing to Mr. Hawthorne's being so near the new Pres- 
ident, and therefore keeping ap the habit of friendship and inter- 
course, the want of which habit so frequently brings college friend- 
ship to an end, he is likely to enter into public hfe. It will be aa 
excellent thing for his future books, — the fault of all his writings, 
in spite of their great beauty, being a want of reality, of the actual, 
healthy, every-day life which is a necessary element in literature. 
All the great poets have it, — Homer, Shakespeare, Scott. It will 
be the very best school for our pet poet. 

Nobody under the sun has so much right as you have to see Mr. 
Dillon's book, which is in six quarto volumes, not one. Our dear 
friend Mr. Bennoch knows him, and tells me to-day that Mr. Dillon 
has invited him to go and look at it. He has just received it from 
the binders. Of course Mr. Bennoch will introduce you. I was so 
glad to read what looked like a renewed pledge of your return to 

England. 

Mr. Bentley has sent me three several apphcations for a second 
series. At present Mr. May forbids all composition, but I suppose 



MISS MITFORD. 321 

the thing will be done. I shall introduce some chapters on French 
poetry and literature. At this moment I am in full chase of Casimer 
Delavigne's ballads. He thought so httle of them that he published 
very few in his Poesies, — one in a note, — and several of ths 
very finest not at all. They are scattered about here and there. 

has reproduced two (which I had) in his Memories; but I 

want all that can be found, especially one of which the refrain is, 
" Chez I'Ambassadere de France." I was such a fool, when I read 
it six or seven years ago, as not to take a copy. Do you think Mr. 
Hector Bossange could help me to that, or to any others not printed 
in the Memories? .... Of course I shall devote one chapter 
to our Emperor. Ah, how much better is such a government 
as his than one which every four years causes a sort of moral 
earthquake; or one hke ours, where whole sessions are passed 
in squabbling ! The loss of his place has saved Disraeh's life, for 
everybody said he could not have survived three months' badger- 
ing in the House. A very intimate friend of his (Mr. Henry 
Drummond, the very odd, very clever member for Surrey) says 
that he had certainly broken a bloodvessel. One piece of news I 
have heard to-day fi-om Miss Goldsmid, that the Jews are certain 
now to gain their point and be admitted to the House of Com- 
mons ; for my part, I hold that every one has a claim to his civil 
rights, were he Mahometan or Hindoo, and I rejoice that poor old 
Sir Isaac, the real author of the movement, will probably live to 
see it accomplished. The thought of succeeding at last in the pur- 
suit to which he has devoted half his life has quite revived him. 

And now Heaven bless you, my very dear friend. None of the 
poems on WelHngton are to be compared to that dirge on Webster. 
I rejoice that my article should have pleased his family. The only 
bit of my new book that I have written is a paper on Taylor and 
Stoddard. Say everything for me to the Ticknors and Nortons and 

your own people, the W s. 

Ever most faithfully and affectionately yours, M. R, M. 

SwALLOWFiELD, February 1, 1853. 

Ah, my dear friend I ask Dr. Holmes what these severe bruises 
and lacerations of the nerves of the principal joints are, and he will 
tell you that they are much more slow and difficult of cure, as well 
as more painful, than half a dozen broken bones. It is now above 
six weeks since that accident, and although the shoulder is going 
on favorably, there is still a total loss of muscular power in the lower 
limbs. I am just lifted out of bed and wheeled to the fireside, and 
14* u 



322 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

then at night wheeled back and Ufled into bed, — without the power 
of standing for a moment, or of putting one foot before the other, or 
of turning in bed. Mr. May says that warm weather will probably 
do much for me, but that till then I must be a prisoner to my room, 
for that if rheumatism supervenes upon my present inability, there 
will be no chance of getting rid of it. So " patience and shuffle the 
cards," as a good man, much in my state, the contented Marquess, 

says in Don Quixote I assure you I am not out of spirits; 

indeed, people are so kind to me that it would be the basest of 
all ingratitude if I were not cheerful as well as thankful. I think 
that in a letter which you must have received by this time, I told 
you how it came about, and thanked you for the comely book which 
shows how cosily America lodges my brethren of the quiU. Dr. 
Holmes ought to have been there, and Dr. Parsons, but their time 
will come and must. Nothing gratifies me more than to find how 
many strangers, writing to me of my Recollections, mention Dr. 
Holmes, classing him sometimes with Thomas Davis, sometimes 
with Praed. If I write another series of Recollections, as, when 
Mr. May will let me, I suppose I must, I shall certainly include Dr. 

Parsons 

Has anybody told you the terrible story of that boy. Lord 
Ockham, Lord Byron's grandson ? I had it from Mr. Noel, Lady 
Byron's cousin-german and intimate friend. While his poor mother 
was dying her death of martyrdom from an inward cancer, — Mrs. 
Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble), who went to sing to her, saw her 
through the door, which was left open, crouching on a floor covered 
with mattresses, on her hands and knees, the only posture she could 
bear, — whilst she with the patience of an angel was enduring her 
long agony, her husband, engrossed by her, left this lad of seventeen 
to his sister and the governess. It was a dull life, and he ran away. 
Mr. Noel (ray friend's brother, from whom he had the story) knew 
most of the youth, who had been for a long time staying at his 
house, and they begged him to undertake the search. Lord 
Ockham had sent a carpet-bag containing his gentleman's clothes to 
his father. Lord Lovelace, in London ; he was therefore disguised, 
and from certain things he had said Mr. Noel suspected that he 
intended to go to America. Accordingly he went first to Bristol, 
then to Liverpool, leaving his description, a sort of written portrait 
of him, with the police at both places. At Liverpool he was found 
before long, and when Mr. Noel, summoned by the electric tele- 
graph, reached that town, he found him dressed as a sailor-boy at a 
low public-house, surrounded by seamen of both nations, and enjoy- 



MISS MITFORD. 323 

ing, as much as possible, their sailor yarns. He had given his money, 
£ 36, to the landlord to keep ; had desired him to inquire for a ship 
where he might be received as cabin-boy ; and had entered into a 
shrewd bargain for his board, stipulating that he should have over 
and above his ordinary rations a pint of beer with his Sunday 
dinner. The landlord did not cheat him, but he postponed all 
engagements under the expectation — seeing that he was clearly a 
gentleman's son — that money would be oflfered for his recovery. 
The worst is that he (Lord Ockham) showed no regret for the sor- 
row and disgrace that he had brought upon his family at such a 
time. He has two tastes not often seen combined, — the love of 
money and of low company. One wonders how he will turn out. 
He is now in Paris, after which he is to re-enter in Grreen's ship (he 
had served in one before ) for a twelvemonth, and to leave the ser- 
vice or remain in it as he may decide then. This is perfectly true ; 
Mr. Noel had it from his brother the very day before he wrote it to 
me. He says that Lady Lovelace's funeral was too ostentatious. 
Escutcheons and silver coronals everywhere. Lord Lovelace's 
taste that, and not Lady Byron's, which is perfectly simple. You 
know that she was buried in the same vault with her father, whose 
coffin and the box containing his heart were in perfect preserva- 
tion. Scott's only grandson, too, is just dead of sheer debauchery. 
Strange ! As if one generation paid in vice and folly for the genius 
of the past. By the way, are you not charmed at the Emperor's 
marriage ? To restore to princes honest love and healthy preference, 
instead of the conventional intermarriages which have brought 
epilepsy and idiotism and madness into half the royal families of 
Christendom ! And then the beauty of that speech, with its fine 
appeals to the best sympathies of our common nature ! I am proud 
of him. What a sad, sad catastrophe was that of young Pierce ! 
I won't call his father general, and I hope he will leave it off. 
With us it is a real offence to give any man a higher rank than 
belongs to him, — to say captain, for instance, to a lieutenant, — and 
that is one of our usages which it would be well to copy. But we 
have follies enough, God knows ; that duchess address, with all its 
tuft-hunting signatures, is a thing to make Englishwomen ashamed. 
Well, they caught it deservedly in an address from American women, 
written probably by some very clever American man. No, I 
have not seen Longfellow's lines on the Duke. One gets sick of 
the very name. Henry is exceedingly fond of his Uttle sister. I 
remember that when he first saw the snov/ fall in large flakes, he 
would have it that it was a shower of white feathers. Love to all 



324 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

my dear friends, the W s, Mrs. Sparks, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Haw- 
thorne. Ever, dearest friend, most affectionately yours, 

M. R. M. 

(1st March, 1853.) 

The numbers for the election of President of France in favor of 
Louis Napoleon were 

for against 

7119791|1119 
Look through the back of this against the candle, or the fire, or 
any light. 

My vert dear Friend : Having a note to send to Mrs. Sparks, 
who has sent me, or rather whose husband has sent me, two 
answers to Lord Mahon, which, coming through a country book- 
seller, have, I suspect, been some months on the way, I cannot help 
sending it enclosed to you, that I may have a chat with you en 
passant, — the last, I hope, before your arrival. If you have not seen 
the above curious instance of figures forming into a word, and that 
word into a prophecy, I think it will amuse you, and I want besides 
to tell you some of the on-dits about the Empress. A Mr. Huddle- 
stone, the head of one of our great Catholic houses, is in despair at 
the marriage. He had been desperately in love with her for two 
years in Spain, — had followed her to Paris, — was called back to Eng- 
land by his father's illness, and was on the point of crossing the Chan- 
nel, after that father's death, to lay himself and £ 30,000 or £ 40,000 
a year at her feet, when the Emperor stepped in and carried off the 
prize. To comfort himself he has got a portrait of her on horse- 
back, which a friend of mine saw the other day at his house. Mrs. 
Browning writes me from Florence : " I wonder if the Empress 
pleases you as well as the Emperor. For my part, I approve alto- 
gether, and none the less that he has offended Austria by the mode 
of announcement. Every cut of the whip on the face of Austria is 
an especial compliment to me, or so I feel it. Let him heed the 
democracy, and do his duty to the world, and use to the utmost his 
great opportunities. Mr. Cobden and the peace societies are pleas- 
ing me infinitely just now in making head against the immorality 
— that 's the word — of the English press. The tone taken up 
towards France is immoral in the highest degree, and the invasion 
cry would be idiotic if it were not something worse. The Empress, 
I heard the other day from high authority, is charming and good at 
heart. She was brought up at a respectable school at Clifton, and 
m very English, which does not prevent her from shooting witk 



MISS MITFORD. 325 

pistols, leaping gates, driving four in band, and upsetting the carriage 
if the frolic requires it, — as brave as a lion and as true as a dog. 
Her complexion is like marble, white, pale, and pure, — the hair light, 
rather sandy, they say, and she powders it with gold dust for effect ; 
but there is less physical and more intellectual beauty than is generally 
attributed to her. She is a woman of very decided opinions. I hke 
all that, don't you ? and I like her letter to the press, as everybody 
must." Besides this, I have to-day a letter from a friend in Paris, 
who says that " everybody feels her charm," and that " the Emperor, 
when presenting her at the balcony on the wedding-day, looked 
radiant with happiness." My Parisian friend says that young Alex- 
andre Dumas is amongst the people arrested for libel, — a thorough 
mauvais sujet. Lamartine is quite ruined, and forced to sell his estates. 
He was always, I believe, expensive, like all those French littera- 
teurs. You don't happen to have in Boston — have you ? — a copy 
of " Les Memoires de Lally Tollendal " ? I think they are different 
pubhcations in defence of his father, published, some in London 
during the Emigration, some in Paris after the Restoration. What I 
want is an account of the retreat from Pondicherie. I '11 tell you why 
some day here. Mrs. Browning is most curious about your rap- 
pings, — of which I suppose you believe as much as I do of the 
Cock Lane G-host, whose doings, by the way, they much resemble. 

I liked Mrs. Tyler's letter ; at least I liked it much better than the 
one to which it was an answer, although I hold it one of our best 
female privileges to have no act or part in such matters. 

Now you will be sorry to have a very bad account of me. 
Tliree weeks ago frost and snow set in here, and ever since I have 
been unable to rise or stand, or put one foot before another, and the 
pain is much worse than at first. I suppose rheumatism has super- 
vened upon the injured nerve. God bless you. Love to all. 

Ever faithfully yours, M. R. M. 

SwALLOWFUiD, March 17, 1853. 
My dear Friend : I cannot enough thank you for your most kind 
and charming letter. Your letters, and the thoughts of you, and the 
hope that you will coax your partners into the hazardous experi- 
ment of letting you come to England, help to console me under this 
long confinement ; for here I am at near Easter still a close prisoner 
from the consequences of the accident that took place before 
Christmas. I have only once left my room, and that only to the 
opposite chamber to have this cleaned, and I got such a chiU that it 
brought back all the pain and increased all the weakness. But 



326 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

when fine weather — warm, genial, sunny weather — comes, I will 
get down in some way or other, and trust myself to that which never 
hurts any one, the honest open air. Spring, and even the approach 
of spring, has upon me something the effect that England has upon 
you. It sets me dreaming, — I see leafy hedges in my dreams, and 
flowery banks, and then I long to make the vision a reality. I 
remember that Fanchon's father. Flush, who was a famous sporting 
dog, used, at the approach of the covering season, to quest in his 
sleep, doubtless by the same instinct that works in me. So, as soon 
as the sun tells the same story with the primroses, I shall make a 
descent after some fashion, and no doubt, aided by Sam's stalwart 
arm, successfully. In the mean while I have one great pleasure in 
store, be the weather what it may ; for next Saturday or the Satur- 
day after I shall see dear Mr. Bennoch. We have not met since 
November, although he has written to me again and again. He 
will take this letter, and I trouble you with a note to kind Mrs. 
Sparks, who is about to send me, or rather who has sent me, some 
American cracknels, which have not yet arrived. To-day, too, I had 
a charming letter from Lasswade, — not t?ie letter, the pamphlet 
one, but one full of kindness firom father and daughter, written by 
Miss Margaret to ask after me with a reality of interest which one 
feels at once. It gave me pleasure in another way too ; Mr. De 
Quincey is of my faith and delight in the Emperor I Is not that 
delightful? Also he holds in great abomination that blackest of 

iniquities , my heresy as to which nearly cost me an idolator 

t' other day, a lady from Essex, who came here to take a house in 
my neighborhood to be near me. She was so shocked that, if we 
had not met afterwards, when I regained my ground a httle by 
certain congenialities, she certainly would have abjured me forever. 

"Well ! no offence to Mrs. . I had rather in a literary question 

agree with Thomas De Quincey than with her and Queen Victoria, 
who, always fond of strong not to say coarse excitements, is 
amongst 's warm admirers. I knew you would like the Empe- 
ror's marriage. I heard last week from a stiff English lady, who 
had been visiting one of the Empress's ladies of honor, that one 
day at St. Cloud she shot thirteen brace of partridges ; " but," added 
the narrator, " she is so sweet and charming a creature that any 
man might fall in love with her notwithstanding." To be sure Mr. 
Thackeray liked you. How could he help it ? Did not he also like 
Dr. Holmes ? I hope so. How glad I should be to see him in 
England, and how glad I shall be to see Mr. Hawthorne I He will 
find all the best judges of English writing admiring him to hia 



MISS MITFORD. 327 

heart's content, warmly and discriminatingly ; and a consulship in a 
bustling town will give him the cheerful reaUty, the healthy air of 
every-day life, which is his only want. Will you tell all these dear 

friends, especially Mr. and Mrs. W , how deeply I feel their 

affectionate sympathy, and thank Mr. Whittier and Professor Long- 
fellow over and over again for their kind condolence? Tell Mr. 
Whittier how much I shall prize his book. He has an earnest 
admirer in Buckingham Palace, Marianne Skerrett, known as the 
Queen's Miss Skerrett, the lady chiefly about her, and the only one 
to whom she talks of books. Miss Skerrett is herself a very clever 
woman, and holds Mr. Whittier to be not only the greatest, but the 
one poet of America ; which last assertion the poet himself would, I 
suspect, be the very first to deny. Your promise of Dr. Parsons's 
poem is very delightful to me. I hold firm to my admiration of 
those stanzas on Webster. Nothing written on the Duke came 
within miles of it, and I have no doubt that the poem on Dante's bust 

is equally fine Mr. Justice Talfourd has just printed a new 

tragedy. He sent it to me from Oxford, not from Reading, where 
he had passed four days and never gave a copy to any mortal, and 
told me, in a very affectionate letter which accompanied it, that " it 
was at present a very private sin, he having only given eight or tea 
copies in all." I suppose that it will be published, for I observe that 
the " not published " is written, not printed, and that Moxon's name 
is on the title-page. It is called " The Castilian," — is on the story of 
a revolt headed by Don John de Padilla in the early part of Charles 
the Fifth's reign, and is more hke Ion than either of his other trage- 
dies. I have just been reading a most interesting little book in 
manuscript, called " The Heart of Montrose." It is a versification in 
three ballads of a very striking letter in Napier's " Life and Times of 
Montrose," by the young lady who calls herself Mary Maynard. It 
is really a little book that ought to make a noise, not too long, full 
of grace and of interest, and she has adhered to the true story with 
excellent taste, that story being a very remarkable union of the 
romantic and the domestic. I am afraid that my other young poet, 

, is dying of consumption ; those fine spirits often fall in that 

way. I have just corrected my book for a cheaper edition. Mr. 
Bentley is very urgent for a second series, and I suppose I must try. 
I shall get you to write for me to Mr. Hector Bossange when you 
come, for come you must. My eyes begin to feel the effects of thia 
long confinement to one smoky and dusty room. 

So far had I written, dearest friend, when this day (March 26) 
brought me your most kind and vrelcome letter enclosed in another 



328 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

from dear Mr. Bennoch. Am I to return Dr. Parsons's ? or shall I 
keep it till you come to fetch it ? Tell the writer how very much I prize 
his kindness, none the less that he likes (as I do) my tragedies, that 
is, one of them, the best of my poor doings. The lines on the Duchess 
are capital, and quite what she deserves ; but I think those the worst 
who, in so true a spirit of what Carlyle would call flunkeyism, con- 
sent to sign any nonsense that their names may figure side by side 
with that of a duchess, and they themselves find (for once) an admit- 
tance to the gilded saloons of Stafford House. For my part, I well- 
nigh lost an admirer the other day by taking a common-sense view 
of the question. A lady (whose name I never heard till a week ago) 
came here to take a house to be near me. (N. B. There was none 
to be had.) Well, she was so provoked to find that I had stopped 

short of the one hundredth page of , and never intended to read 

another, that I do think, if we had not discovered some sympathies 
to counterbalance that grand difference — As I live, I have told 
you that story before I Ah ! I am sixty-six, and I get older 
every day I So does little Henry, who is at home just now, and 
longing to put the clock forward that he may go to America. 
He is a boy of great promise, full of sound sense, and as good as 
good can be. I suppose that he never in his life told an untruth, or 
broke a promise, or disobeyed a command. He is very fond of his 
little sister; and not at all jealous either — to the great praise of 
that four-footed lady be it said — is Fanchon, who watches over 
the cradle, and is as fond of the baby in her way as Henry in his. 
So far from paying me copyright money, all that I ever received 

from Mr. B was two copies of his edition of " Our Village," one 

of which I gave away, and of the other some chance visitor has 
taken one of the volumes. I really do think I shall ask him for a 
copy or two. How can I ever thank you enough for your infinite 
kindness in sending me books ! Thank you again and again. Dear 
Mr. Bennoch has been making an admirable speech, in moving to 
present the thanks of the city to Mr. Layard. How one likes to 
feel proud of one's friends ! God bless you ! 

Ever most faithfully yours, M. R. M. 

Kind Mrs. Sparks's biscuits arrived quite safe. How droll some 

of the cookery is in " The Wide, Wide World " ! It would try 

English stomachs by its over-richness. I wonder you are not all 

dead, if such be your cuisine. 

SwAiLOWFiELD, May 8, 18£3. 

How shall I thank you enough, dear and kind friend, for the copy 

of that arrived here yesterday ! Very like, only it wanted 



MISS MITFORD. 329 

what that great painter, the sun, will never arrive at giving, the 
actual look of life which is the one great charm of the human coun- 
tenance. Strange that the very source of light should fail in giving 
that light of the face, the smile. However, all that can be given by 
that branch of art has been given. I never before saw so good a 
photographic portrait, and for one that gives more I must wait until 
John Lucas, or some American John Lucas, shall coax you into sit- 
ting. I sent you, ten days ago, a batch of notes, and a most unworthy 
letter of thanks for one of your parcels of gift-books ; and I write 
the rather now to tell you I am better than then, and hope to be in a 
still better plight before July or August, when a most welcome letter 
from Mr. Tuckerman has bidden us to expect you to officiate as 
Master of the Ceremonies to Mr. Hawthorne, who, welcome for 
himself, will be trebly welcome for such an introducer. 

Now let me say how much I like De Quincey's new volumes. The 
" Wreck of a Household " shows great power of narrative, if he would 
but take the trouble to be right as to details ; the least and lowest 
part of the art, that of interesting you in his people, he has. And 
those " Last Days of Kant," how affecting they are, and how thor- 
oughly in every line and in every thought, agree with him or not, 
(and in all that relates to Napoleon I differ from him, as in his 
overestimate of Wordsworth and of Coleridge), one always feels 
how thoroughly and completely he is a gentleman as well as a 
great writer; and so much has that to do with my admiration, 
that I have come to tracing personal character in books almost 
as a test of literary merit ; Charles Boner's " Chamois-Hunting," 
for instance, owes a great part of its charm to the resolute truth 
of the writer, and a great drawback from the attraction of " My 
Novel " seems to me to be derived from the hlase feeling, the 
unclean mind from whence it springs, felt most Avhen trying after 
moralities. 

Amongst your bounties I was much amused with the New York 
magazines, the curious turning up of a new claimant to the Louis- 
the-Seventeenth pretension amongst the Red Indians, and the rap- 
pings and pencil-writings of the new Spiritualists. One should 
wonder most at the believers in these two branches of faith, if that 
particular class did not always seem to be provided most abundantly 
whenever a demand occurs. Only think of Mrs. Browning giving 
the most unlimited credence to every " rapping " story which any- 
body can tell her ! Did I tell you that the work on which she is 
engaged is a fictitious autobiography in blank verse, the heroine a 
woman artist (I suppose singer or actress), and the tone intensely 



33© YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

modern ? You will see that " Colombe's Birthday " has been brought 
out at the Haymarket. Mr. Chorley (Robert Browning's most in- 
timate friend) writes me word that Mrs. Martin (Helen Faucit, at 
whose persuasion it was acted) told him that it had gone off " better 
than she expected." Have you seen Alexander Smith's book, which 
is all the rage just now ? I saw some extracts from his poems a year 
and a half ago, and the whole book is like a quantity of extracts put 
together without any sort of connection, a mass of powerful metaphor 
with scarce any lattice-work for the honeysuckles to climb upon. 
Keats was too much like this ; but then Keats was the first. Now 
this book, admitting its merit in a certain way, is but the imitation 
of a school, and, in my mind, a bad school. One such poem as that 
on the bust of Dante is worth a whole wilderness of these ne<v 
writers, the very best of them. Certainly nothing better than those 
two pages ever crossed the Atlantic. 

God bless you, dear friend. Say everything for me to dear Mr. 

and Mrs. W , to Dr. Holmes, to Dr. Parsons, to Mr. Whittier, 

(how powerful his new volume is !) to Mr. Stoddard, to Mrs. Sparks, 
to all my friends. 

Ever most affectionately yours, M. R. M. 

I am writing on the 8th of May, but where is the May of the 
poets ? Half the morning yesterday it snowed, at night there was 
ice as thick as a shilling, and to-day it is absolutely as cold as Christ- 
mas. Of course the leaves reftise to unfold, the nightingales can 
hardly be said to sing, even the hateful cuckoo holds his peace. I 
am hoping to see dear Mr. Bennoch soon to supply some glow and 
warmth. 

SwALLOwriELD, June 4, 1853. 

I write at once, dearest friend, to acknowledge your most kind and 
welcome letter. I am better than when I wrote last, and get out 
almost every day for a very slow and quiet drive round our lovely 
lanes; far more lovely than last year, since the foliage is quite as 
thick again, and all the flowery trees, aloes, laburnums, horse-chest- 
nuts, acacias, honeysuckles, azalias, rhododendrons, hawthorns, are 
one mass of blossoms, — literally the leaves are hardly visible, so 
that the color, whenever we come upon park, shrubbery, or plan- 
tation, ia such as should be seen to be imagined. In my long life 
I never knew such a season of flowers ; so the wet winter and 
the cold spring have their compensation. I get out in this way with 

Sam and K and the baby, and it gives me exquisite pleasure, and 

if you were here tlie pleasure would be multiplied a thousand fold 



MISS MITFORD. 331 

by your socfety ; but I do not gain strength in the least. Attempt- 
ing to do a httle more and take some young people to the gates of 
Whiteknights, which, without my presence, would be closed, proved 
too far and too rapid a movement, and for two days I could not stir 
for excessive soreness all over the body. I am still lifted down stairs 
step by step, and it is an operation of such time (it takes half an 
hour to get me down that one flight of cottage stairs), such pain, 
such fatigue, and such difficulty, that, unless to get out in the pony- 
chaise, I do not attempt to leave my room. I am still hfted into 
bed, and can neither turn nor move in any way when there, am 
wheeled from the stairs to the pony-carriage, cannot walk three 
steps, can hardly stand a moment, and in rising from my chair am 
sometimes ten minutes, often longer. So you see that I am very, very 
feeble and infirm. Still I feel sound at heart and clear in head, am 
quite as cheerful as ever, and, except that I get very much sooner 
exhausted, enjoy society as much as ever, so you must come if only 
to make me well. I do verily beheve your coming would do me 
more good than anything. 

I was much interested by your account of the poor English stage 
coachman. Ah, these are bad days for stage coachmen on both 
sides the Atlantic I Do you remember his name ? and do you know 
whether he drove between London and Reading, or between Read- 
ing and Basingstoke ? — a most useless branch railroad between the 
two latter places, constructed by the Great Western simply out of 
spite to the Southwestern, which I am happy to state has never yet 
paid its daily expenses, to say nothing of the cost of construction, 
and has taken everything off our road, which before abounded in 
coaches, carriers, and conveyances of all sorts. The vile railway 
does us no earthly good, we being above four miles from the nearest 
station, and you may imagine how much inconvenience the absence 
of stated communication with a market town causes to our small 
family, especially now that I can neither spare Sam nor the pony to 
go twelve miles. You must come to England and come often to see 
me, just to prove that there is any good whatever in railways, — a 
fact I am often inclined to doubt. 

I shall send this letter to be forwarded to Mr. Bennett, and desire 
him to write to you himself. He is, as you say, an "excellent 
youth," although it is very generous in me to say so^ for I do believe 
that you came to see me since he has been. Dear Mr. Bennoch, 
with all his multifarious business, has been again and again. God 
bless him ! .... To return to Mr Bennett. He has been engaged 
in a grand battle with the trustees of an old charity school, prin-- 



332 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

cipally the vicar. His two brothers helped in the fight. They won 
a notable victory. They were quite right in the matter in dispute, 
and the " excellent youth " came out well in various letters. His 
opponent, the vicar, was Senior Wrangler at our Cambridge, the very 
highest University honor in England, and tutor to the present Lord 
Grey. 

By the way, Mr. wrote to me the other day to ask that I 

would let him be here when Mr. Hawthorne comes to see me. I 
only answered this request by asking whether he did not intend to 
come to see me before that time, for certainly he might come to visit 
an old friend, especially a sick one, for her own sake, and not merely 
to meet a notability, and I am by no means sure that Mr. Hawthorne 
might not prefer to come alone or with dear Mr. Bennoch ; at all 
events it ought to be left to his choice, and besides I have not lost 
the hope of your being the introducer of the great romancer, and 
then how little should I want anybody to come between us. Begin 
as they may, all my paragraphs slide into that refrain of Pray, pray 
come ! 

I have written to you about other kindnesses since that note full 
of hopes, but I do not think that I did write to thank you for dear 
Dr. Holmes's " Lecture on English Poetesses," or rather the analysis 
of a lecture which sins only by over-gallantry. Ah, there is a dif- 
ference between the sexes, and the difference is the reverse way to 
that hi which he puts it ! Tell him I sent his charming stanzas on 
Moore to a leading member of the Irish committee for raising a 
monument to his memory, and that they were received with enthu- 
siasm by the Irish friends of the poet. I have sent them to many 
persons in England worthy to be so honored, and the very cleverest 
woman whom I have ever known (Miss Goldsmid) wrote to me only 
yesterday to thank me for sending her that exquisite poem, adding, 
" I think the stanza ' If on his cheek, etc.,' contains one of the most 
beautiful similes to be found in the whole domain of poetry." I 
also told Mrs. Browning what dear Dr. Holmes said of her. The 
American poets whom she prefers are Lowell and Emerson. Now 
I know something of Lowell and of Emerson, but I hold that those 
lines on Dante's bust are amongst the finest ever written in the lan- 
guage, whether by American or Englishman ; don't you ? And 
what a grand Dead March is the poem on Webster ! . . . . Also 
Mrs. Browning believes in spirit-rapping stories, — all, — and tells 
me that Robert Owen has been converted by them to a belief in a 
fiiture state. Everybody everywhere is turning tables. The young 
Russells, who are surcharged with electricity, set them spinning in 



3IISS MITFORD. 333 

fen minutes. In general, you know, it is usual to take off all articles 
of metal. They, the other night, took a fancy to remove their rings 
and bracelets, and, having done so, the table, which had paused for 
a moment, began whirling again as fast as ever the contrary way. 
This is a fact, and a curious one. 

I have lent three volumes of your " De Quincey " to my young 
friend, James Payn, a poet of very high promise, who has verified 
the Green story, and taken the books with him to the Lakes. G-od 
grant, my dear friend, that you may not lose by " Our Village " ; 
that is what I care for. 

Ever faithfully yours, M. R. M. 

SwALLOWFiEiD, June 23, 1853. 
Ah, my very dear friend, we shall not see you this summer, I am 
sure. For the first time I clearly perceive the obstacle, and I feel 
that unless some chance should detain Mr. Ticknor, we must give up 
the great happiness of seeing you till next year. I wonder whether 
your poor old friend will be alive to greet you then ! Well, that is 
as God pleases ; in the mean time be assured that you have been one 
of the chief comforts and blessings of these latter years of my life, 
not only in your own fi-iendship and your thousand kindnesses, but 
in the kindness and friendship of dear Mr. Bennoch, which, in the 
first instance, I mainly owe to you. I am in somewhat better trim, 
although the getting out of doors and into the pony-carriage, from 
which Mr. May hoped such great things, has hardly answered his 
expectations. I am not stronger, and I am so nervous that I can 
only bear to be driven, or more ignominiously still to be led, at a 
foot's pace through the lanes. I am still unable to stand or walk, 
unless supported by Sam's strong hands lifting me up on each side, 
still obHged to be lifted into bed, and unable to turn or move when 
there, the worst grievance of all. However, I am in as good spirits 
as ever, and just at this moment most comfortably seated under the 
acacia-tree at the corner of my house, — the beautiful acacia literally 
loaded with its snowy chains (the flowering trees this summer, 
lilacs, laburnums, rhododendrons, azalias, have been one mass of 
blossoms, and none are so graceful as this waving acacia) ; on one 
side a syringa, smelling and looking like an orange-tree ; a jar of roses 
on the table before me, — fresh-gathered roses, the pride of Sam's 
heart ; and little Fanchon at my feet, too idle to eat the biscuits with 
which I am trying to tempt her, — biscuits from Boston, sent to me 
by Mrs. Sparks, whose kindness is really indefatigable, and which 
Fanchon ought to hke upon that principle if upon no other, but you 



334 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

know her laziness of old, and she improves in it every day. Well, 
that is a picture of the Swallowfield cottage at this moment, and I 

wish that you and the Bennochs and the W s and Mr. Whipple 

were here to add to its life and comfort. You must come next year, 
and come in May, that you and dear Mr. Bennoch may hear the 
nightingales together. He has never heard them, and this year they 
have been faint and feeble (as indeed they were last) compared with 
their usual song. Now they are over, and although I expect him 
next week, it will be too late. 

Precious fooling that has been at Stafford House I And our 

who delights in strong, not to say worse, emotions, whose chief 
pleasure it was to see the lions fed in Van Amburgh's time, wh© 
went seven times to see the Ghost in the " Corsican Brothers," and 
has every sort of natural curiosity (not to say wonder) brought to 
her at Buckingham Palace, was in a state of exceeding misery be- 
cause she could not, consistently with her amicable relations with 
the United States, receive Mrs. there. (Ah ! our dear Em- 
peror has better taste. Heaven bless him I) From Lord Shaftesbury 
one looks for unmitigated cant, but I did expect better things of 
Lord Carlisle. How many names that both you and I know went 
there merely because the owner of the house was a fashionable 

Duchess, — the Wilmers (" though they are my friends "), the P s 

and ! For my part, I have never read beyond the first one 

hundred pages, and have a certain malicious pleasure in so saying. 
Let me add that almost all the clever men whom I have seen are of 
the same faction ; they took up the book and laid it down again. 
Do you ever reprint French books, or ever get them translated ? 
By very far the most delightful work that I have read for many 
years is Sainte-Beuve's " Causeries du Lundi," or his weekly feuille- 
tons in the " Constitutionnel." I am sure they would sell if there 
be any taste for French literature. It is so curious, so various, so 
healthy, so catholic in its biography and criticism ; but it must be 
well done by some one who writes good English prose and knows 
well the literary history of France. Don't trust women; they, 
especially the authoresses, are as ignorant as dirt. Just as I had got 
to this point, Mr. Willmot came to spend the evening, and very 
singularly consulted me about undertaking a series of English Por- 
traits Litteraires, like Sainte-Beuve's former works. He will do it 
well, and I commended him to the charming " Causeries," and ad- 
vised him to make that a weekly article, as no doubt he could. It 
would only tell the better for the wide diffusion. He does, you 
know, the best criticism of The Times. I have most charming 



MISS MITFORD. 335 

letters from Dr. Parsons and dear Mr. Whittier. Hia cordiality is 
delightful. God bless you. 

Ever yours, M. K. M. 

(No date.) 

Never, my dear friend, did I expect to like so "well a man who 
came in your place, as I do like Mr. Ticknor. He is an admirable 
person, very like his cousin in mind and manners, unmistakably 
good. It is delightful to hear him talk of you, and to feel that the 
sort of elder brotherhood which a senior partner must exercise in a 
firm is in such hands. He was very kind to little Harry, and Harry 
likes him next to you. You know he had been stanch in resisting 

all the advances of dear Mr. , who had asked him if he would 

not come to him, to which he had responded by a sturdy " no I " 
He (Mr. Ticknor) came here on Saturday with the dear Bennochs 
(K B. I love him better than ever), and the Kingsleys met him. 
Mr. Hawthorne was to have come, but could not leave Liverpool so 
soon, so that is a pleasure to come. He will tell you that all is ar- 
ranged for printing with Colburn's successors, Hurst and Blackett, 
two separate works, the plays and dramatic scenes forming one, 
the stories to be headed by a long tale, of which I have always had 
the idea in my head, to form almost a novel. God grant me strength 
to do myself and my publishers justice in that story ! This whole 
affair springs from the fancy which Mr. Bennoch has taken to have the 
plays printed in a collected form during my lifetime, for I had always 
felt that they would be so printed after my death, so that their com- 
ing out now seems to me a sort of anachronism. The one certain 
pleasure that I shall derive from this arrangement will be, having my 
name and yours joined together in the American edition, for we re- 
serve the early sheets. Nothing ever vexed me so much as the other 

book not being in your hands. That was Mr. 's fault, for, stLEf 

as Bentley is, Mr. Bennoch would have managed him Of a 

certainty my first strong interest in American poetry sprang from 
dear Dr. Holmes's exquisite little piece of scenery painting, which he 
delivered where his father had been educated. You sent me that, 
and thus made the friendship between Dr. Holmes and me ; and 
now you are yourself — you, my dearest American friend — deliv- 
ering an address at the greatest American University. It is a great 
honor, and one .... 

I suppose Mr. Ticknor tells you the book-news ? The most strik- 
ing work for years is " Haydon's Life." I hope you have reprinted 
it, for it is sure, not only of a run, but of a durable success. You 



33^ YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

know that the family wanted me to edit the book. I shrank from 
a task that required so much knowledge which could only be pos- 
sessed by one ''living in the artist world now, to know who was 
dead and who alive, and Mr. Tom Taylor has done it admirably. I 
read the book twice over, so profound was my interest in it. In his 
?arly days, I used to be a sort of safety-valve to that ardent spirit, 
toost like Benvenuto Cellini both in pen and tongue and person. 
Our dear Mr. Bennoch was the providence of his later years. They 
tell me that that powerfiil work has entirely stopped the sale of 
Moore's Life, which, all tinsel and tawdry rags, might have been 
written by a court newsman or a court milliner. I wonder whether 
they will print the other six volumes ; for the four out they have 
given Mrs. Moore three thousand pounds. A bad account Mr. Tup- 

per gives of . Fancy his conceit ! When Mr. Tupper praised 

a passage in one of his poems, he said, " If I had known you liked 
it, I would have omitted that passage in my new edition," and he 
has done so by passages praised by persons of taste, cut them out 
bodily and left the sentences before and after to join themselves how 

they could. What a bad figure your President and Mr. cut 

at the opening of your Exhibition I I am sorry for , for, al- 
though he has quite forgotten me since his aunt's book came out, 
he once stayed three weeks with us, and I liked him. Well, so many 
of his countrymen are over-good to me, that I may well forgive one 
solitary instance of forgetfulness ! Make my love to all my dear 
friends at Boston and Cambridge. Tell Mrs. Sparks how dearly I 
should have liked to have been at her side on the Thursday. Tell 
Dr. Holmes that his kind approbation of Rienzi is one of my en- 
couragements in this new edition. I had a long talk about him with 
Mr. Ticknor, and rejoice to find him so young. Thank Mr. Whipple 
again and again for his kindness. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

(No date.) 

My vert dear Friend : Mr. Hillard (whom I shall be delighted 
to see if he come to England and will let me know when he can get 
here) — Mr. Hillard has just put into verse my own feelings about 
you. It is the one comfort belonging to the hard work of these 
two books (for besides the Dramatic Works in two thick volumes, 
there are prose stories in two also, and I have one long tale, almost a 
novel, to write), — it is the one comfort of this labor that /shall see 
our names together on one page. I have just finished a long gos- 
siping preface of thirty or forty pages to the Dramatic Work^ 



MISS MITFORD. 337 

which is much more an autobiography than the Recollections, and 
which I have tried to make as amusing as if it were ill-natured. 
That work is dedicated to our dear Mr. Bennoch, another consola- 
tion. I sent the dedication to dear Mr. Ticknor, but as his letter of 
adieu did not reach me till two or three days after it was written, 
and I am not quite sure that I recollected the number in Pater- 
noster Row, I shall send it to you here. " To Francis Bennoch, Esq., 
who blends in his life great public services with the most genial 
private hospitahty ; who, munificent patron of poet and of painter, 
is the first to recognize every talent except his own, content to be 
beloved where others claim to be admired ; to him, equally valued 
as companion and as friend, these volumes are most resjsectftilly and 
affectionately inscribed by the author." I write from memory, but 
if this be not it, it is very like it, (and I beg you to believe that 
my preface is a little better English than this agglomeration of 
" its.") 

Mr. Kingsley says that Alfred Tennyson says that Alexander 
Smith's poems show fancy, but not imagination ; and on my repeat- 
ing this to Mrs. Browning, she said it was exactly her impression. 
For my part I am struck by the extravagance and the total want 
of finish and of constructive power, and I am in hopes that ulti- 
mately good will come out of evil, for Mr. Kingsley has written, he 
tells me, a paper called " Alexander Pope and Alexander Smith," 
and Mr. Willmott, the powerful critic of The Times, takes the samo 
view, he tells me, and will doubtless put it into print some day 
or other, so that the carrying this bad school to excess will work 

for good. By the way, Mr. , whose Imogen is so beautiful, 

sent me the other day a terrible wild affair in that style, and I 
wrote him a frank letter, which my sincere admiration for what he 
does well gives me some right to do. He has in him the making of 
a great poet ; but, if he once take to these obscurities, he is lost. I 
hope I have not ofiended him, for I tliink it is a real talent, and I feel 
the strongest interest in him. My young friend, James Payn, went 
a fortnight or three weeks ago to Lasswade and spent an evening 
with Mr. De Quincey. He speaks of him just as you do, marvel- 
lously fine in point of conversation, looking like an old beggar, but 
with the manners of a prince, " if," adds James Payn, " we may 
understand by that all that is intelligent and courteous and charm- 
ing." (I suppose he means such manners as our Emperor's.) He 
began by saying that his life was a mere misery to him from nerves, 
and that he could only render it endurable by a semi-inebriation 
with opium. (I always thought he had not left opium off.) .... 
15 V 



338 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS., 

On his return, James Payn again visited Harriet Martineau, who 
talked frankly about the book, exculpating Mr. Atkinson and taking 
all the blame to herself. She asked if I had read it, and on finding 
that I had not, said, " It was better so." There are fine points 
about Harriet Martineau. Mrs. Browning is positively crazy 
about the spirit-rappings. She believes every story, European or 
American, and says our Emperor consults the mediums, which I 
disbelieve. 

The above was written yesterday. To-day has brought me a 
charming letter from Miss De Quincey. She has been very ill, but 
is now back at Lasswade, and longing most earnestly to persuade 
her father to return to Grasmere. Will she succeed ? She sends 
me a charming message from a brother Francis, a young physician 
settled in India. She says that her sister told her her father was in 
bad spirits when talking to Mr. Payn, which perhaps accounts for 
his confessing to the continuing the opium-eating. 

Mr. brought me some proofs of his new volume of poems. 

I think that if he will take pains he will be a real poet. But it is 
so difficult to get young men to believe that correcting and re-cor- 
recting is necessary, and he is a most charming person, and so gets 
spoiled. I spoil him myself, Grod forgive me ! although I advise him 
to the best of my power. No signs of Mr, Hawthorne yet! 
Heaven bless you, my dear friend. 

Ever faithfully yours, M. R. M. 

October, 1853. 

My vert dear Friend : I cannot thank you enough for the two 
charming books which you have sent me. I enclose a letter for the 
author of this very remarkable book of ItaUan travel, and I have 
written to dear Mr. Hawthorne myself. 

Since I wrote to you, dea'- Mr. Bennoch sent to me to look out 
what letters I could find of poor Haydon's. I was half killed by 
the operation, all my sins came upon me ; for, lulling my conscience 
by carelessness about bills and receipts, and by answering almost 
every letter the day it comes, I am in other respects utterly careless, 
and my great mass of correspondence goes where fate and K de- 
cree. We had five great chests and boxes, two huge hampers, fifteen 
or sixteen baskets, and more drawers than you would believe the 
house could hold, to look over, and at last disinterred sixty-five. I did 
not dare read them for fear of the dust, but I have no doubt they 
will be most valuable, for his letters were matchless for talent and 
spirit. I hope you have reprinted the Life ; if so, of course you will 



MISS MITFORD. 339 

publish the Correspondence. By the way, it is a curious speci- 
men of the httle care our highest people have for poetry of the 
school, that Vice-Chancellor Wood, one of the most accom- 
plished men whom I have ever known, a bosom friend of Ma- 
caulay, was with me last week, and had never heard of Alexander 
Smith. 

I continue terribly lame, and with no chance of amendment till 
the spring, when you will come and do me good. Besides the lame- 
ness, I am also miserably feeble, ten years older than when you saw 
me last. I am working as well as I can, but very slowly. I send 
you a proof of the Preface to the Dramatic Works (not knowing 
whether they have sent you the sheets, or when they mean to bring 
it out). The few who have seen this Introduction like it. It tells 
the truth about myself and says no iU of other people. God bless 
you, dear friend. Say everything for me to all friends, not forgetting 
Mr. Ticknor. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

SwAUOWFiELD, November 8, 1853. 

My vert dear Friend : Your letters are always delightful to me, 
even when they are dated Boston ; think what they will be when 
they are dated London. In my last I sent you a very rough proof 
of my Preface (I think Mr. Hurst means to call it Introductionj, 
which you will find autobiographical to your heart's content ; I hope 
you will like it. To-day I enclose the first rough draft of an ac- 
count of my first impression of Haydon. Don't print it, please, be- 
cause I suppose they mean it for a part of the Correspondence when 
it shall be published. I looked out for those sixty-five long letters 
of Hay don's, — as long, perhaps, each, as half a dozen of mine to 
you, — and doubtless I have many more, but I was almost blinded 
by the dust in hunting up those, my eyes having been very tender 
since I was shut up in a smoky room for twenty-two weeks last 
winter. I find now that Messrs. Longman have postponed the pub- 
lication of the Correspondence in the fear that it would injure the 
sale of the Memoirs, the book having had a great success here. By 
the enclosed, which is as true and as like as I could make it, you will 
see that he was a very brilliant and charming person. I believe that 
next to having been heart-broken by the committee and the heart- 
lessness of his pupil , and enraged by the passion for that miser- 
able little wretch, Tom Thumb, that the real cause of his suicide 
was to get his family provided for. It succeeded. By one way and 
another they had £ 440 a year between the four ; but although the 



340 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

poor father never complained, you will see by his book what a 
selfish wretch that was 

My tragedies are printed, and the dramatic scenes, forming, with 
the preface, two volumes of above four hundred pages each. But 
I don't think they are to come out till the prose work, and that is 
not a quarter finished. I am always a most slow and laborious 
writer (that Preface was written three times over throughout, and 
many parts of it five or six), and of course my ill health does not 
improve my powers of composition. This wet summer and autumn 
have been terribly against me. I am lamer even than when Mr. 
Ticknor saw me, and sometimes cannot even dip the pen in the 
ink without holding it in my left hand. Thank Grod my head is 
spared, and my heart is, I think, as young as ever. 

I had a letter to-day from Mr. Chorley ; he has been staying all 
the autumn with Sir William Molesworth, now a Cabinet Minister, 
but he complains terribly about his own health, notwithstanding he 
has a play coming out at the Olympic, which Mr. Wigan has taken. 
Mrs. Kingsley, a most sweet person, has a cough which has forced 
them to send her to the sea. You shall be sure to see both him and 
Mr. Willmott if I can compass it ; but we live, each of us, seven 
miles apart, and these country clergymen are so tied to their parish 
that they are difficult to catch. However, they both come to see 
me whenever they can, and we must contrive it. You will like both 
in different ways. Mr. Willmott is one of the most agreeable men 
in the world, and Mr. Kingsley is charming. I have another dear 
friend, not an author, whom I prefer to either, — Hugh Pearson. 
He made for himself a collection of De Quincey, when a lad at 
Oxford. You would like him. I think, better than anybody ; but he 
too is a country clergyman, living eight miles off. Poor Mr. Norton I 
His letters were charming. He is connected in my mind with Mrs. 
Hemans, too, to whom he was so kind. You must say everything 
for me to dear Mrs. Sparks. I seem most ungrateful to her, but I 
really have little power of writing letters just now. Did I tell 

you that Mr. sent me a poem called , which I am very 

sorry that he ever wrote. It has shocked Mr. Bennoch even 
more than it did me. You must get him to write more poems 

like . A young friend of mine has brought out a little volume 

in which there is striking evidence of talent ; but none of these 
young writers take pains. How very pretty is that scrap on a 
country church ! Mrs. Browning is at Florence, but is going to 
Rome. She says that your countryman, Mr. Story, has made a 
charming statuette, I think of Beethoven, or else of Mendelssohn, 



MISS MITFORD. 341 

•which ought to make his reputation. She is crazy about mediums. 
She says (but I have not heard it elsewhere) that Thackeray and 
Dickens are to winter at Rome, and Alfred Tennyson at Florence. 
Mrs. Trollope has quite recovered, and receives as usual. How full 
of beauty Mr. HUlard's book is ! thank him for it again and again. 
Did I tell you that they are going to engrave a portrait of me by 
Haydon, now belonging to Mr. Bennoch, for the Dramatic Works ? 
God bless you, my very dear friend. Say everything for me to Mr. 
Ticknor and Dr. Holmes and Dr. Parsons, and all my friends in 
Boston. Little Henry grows a very sensible, intelligent boy, and is 
a great favorite at his school. He is getting on with French. 

Once more, ever yours, M. R. M. 

1854. 

(January, 1854.) 

My beloved Friend: They who correspond with sick people 
must be content to receive such letters as are sent from hospitals. 
For many weeks I have been wholly shut up in my own room, get- 
ting with exceeding difficulty from the bed to the fireside, quite 
unable to stir either in the chair or in the bed, but much less miser- 
able up than when in bed. The terrible cold of last summer did 
not allow me to gain any strength, so that although the fire in my 
room is kept up night and day, yet a severe attack of influenza 
came on and would have carried me off, had not Mr. May been so 
much alarmed at the state of the pulse and the general feebleness 
as to order me two tablespoonfuls of champagne in water once a 
day, and a teaspoonful of brandy also in water, at night, which 
undoubtedly saved my life. It is the only good argument for what 
is called teetotalism that it keeps more admirable medicines as med- 
icine; for undoubtedly a wine-drinker, however moderate, would 
not have been brought round by the remedy which did me so much 
good. Miserably feeble I still am, and shall continue till May or 
June (if it please God to spare my life till then), when, if it be fine 
weather, Sam will lift me down stairs and into the pony-chaise, and 
I may get stronger. Well, in the midst of the terrible cough, which 
did not allow me to lie down in bed, and a weakness difficult to 
describe, I finished " Atherton." I did it against orders and against 
warning, because I had an impression that I should not live to com- 
plete it. and I sent it yesterday to London to dear Mr. Bennoch, so 
I suppose you will soon receive the sheets. Almost every line has 
been written three times over, and it is certainly the most cheerful 
and sunshiny story that was ever composed in such a state of help- 



342 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

lessness, feebleness, and suffering ; for the rheumatic pain in the 
chest not only rendered the cough terrible (that, thank God, is 
nearly gone now), but makes the position of writing one of 
misery. God grant you may like this story 1 I shall at least say 
in the Preface that it will give me one pleasure, that of having in 
the American title-page the names of dear friends united with 
mine. Mind I don't know whether the story be good or bad. I 
only answer for its having the youthfulness which you liked in the 
preface to the plays. Well, dearest friend, just when I was at the 
worst came your letter about the ducks and the ducks themselves. 
Never were birds so welcome. My friend, Mr. May, the cleverest 
and most admirable person whom I know in this neighborhood, 
refuses all fees of any sort, and comes twelve miles to see me, when 
torn to pieces by all the great folk round, from pure friendship. 
Think how glad I was to have such a dainty to offer him just wheu 
he had all his family gathered about him at Christmas. I thank 
you from the bottom of my heart for giving me this great pleasure, 
infinitely greater than eating it myself would have been. They 
were delicious. How very, very good you are to me ! 

Has Mrs. Craig written to you to tell you of her marriage ? I 
will run the risk of repetition and tell you that it is the charming 
Margaret De Quincey, who has married the son of a Scotch neigh- 
bor. He has purchased land in Ireland, and they are about to live in 
Tipperary, — a district which Irish people tell me is losing its repu- 
tation for being the most disturbed in Ireland, but keeping that for 
superior fertility. They are trying to regain a reputation for litera- 
ture in Edinburgh. John Ruskin has been giving a series of lectures 
on art there, and Mr. Kingsley four lectures on the schools of Alex- 
andria. 

Nothing out of Parliament has for very long made so strong a 
sensation as our dear Mr. Bennoch's evidence on the London Cor- 
poration. Three leading articles in The Times paid him the highest 
compliments, and you know what that implies. I have myself 
had several letters congratulating me on having such a friend. 
Ah 1 the public qualities make but a part of that fine and genial 
character, although I firmly believe that tlie strength is essen- 
tial to the tenderness. I always put you and him together, and it 
is one of the compensations of my old age to have acquired such 
friends. 

Have you seen Matthew Arnold's poems ? They have fine bits. 
The author is a son of Dr. Arnold. 

God bless you ! Say everything for me to my dear American 



3nSS MITFORD. 343 

friends, Drs. Holmes and Parsons, Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Whittier, 
Mrs. Sparks, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Whipple, Mr. and Mrs. Willard, and 
Mr. Ticknor. Many, very many happy years to them and to you. 
Always most affectionately yours, M. R. M. 

P. S. I enclose some slips to be pasted into books for my differ- 
ent American friends. If I have sent too many, you will know 
which to omit. I must add to the American preface a line expres- 
sive of my pleasure in joining my name to yours. I will send one 
line here for fear of its not going. Mr. May says that those ducks 
were amongst the few things thoroughly deserving their reputation, 
holding the same place, as compared with our wild ducks, that the 
finest venison does to common mutton. I cannot tell you how 
much I thank you for enabling me to send such a treat to such a 
friend. You will send a copy of the prose book or the dramas, 
according to your own pleasure, only I should like the two dear 
doctors to have the plays. 

SWALLOWFIELD, January 23, 1854. 

I have always to thank you for some kindness, dearest Mr. 
Fields, generally for many. How clever those magazines are, 
especially Mr. Lowell's article, and Mr. Bayard Taylor's graceful 
stanzas ! Just now I have to ask you to forward the enclosed to 
Mr. Whittier. He sent me a charming poem on Burns, full of ten- 
derness and humanity, and the indulgence which the wise and good 
can so well afford, and which only the wisest and best can show to 
their erring brethren. I rejoice to hear that he is getting well 
again. I myself am weaker and more helpless every day, and the 
rheumatic pain in the chest increases so rapidly, and makes writing 
so difficult, even the writing such a note as this, that I cannot be 
thankful enough for having finished " Atherton," for I am sure I could 
not write it now. There is some chance of my getting better in 
the summer, if I can be got into the air, and that must be by being 
let down in a chair through a trap-door, like so much railway lug- 
gage, for there is not the slightest power of helping myself left in 
me, — nothing, indeed, but the good spirits which Shakespeare gave 
to Horatio, and Hamlet envied him. Dearest Mr. Bennoch has 
made me a superb present, — two portraits of our Emperor and his 
fair wife. He all intellect, — never was a brow so full of thought ; 
she all sweetness, — such a mouth was never seen, it seems waiting 
to smile. The beauty is rather of expression than of feature, which 

is exactly what it ought to be 

M. R. M. 



344 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

SwALLOWFiELB, May 2, 1854. 

My dkar Friknd : Long before this time, you will, I hope, have 
received the sheets of "Atherton." It has met with an enthusiastic 
reception from the English press, and certainly the friends who 
have written to me on the subject seem to prefer the tale which 
fills the first volume to anything that I have done. I hope you 
will hke it, — I am sure you will not detect in it the gloom of a sick- 
chamber. Mr. May holds out hopes that the summer may do me 
good. As yet the spring has been most unfavorable to invalids, 
being one combined series of east-wind, so that instead of getting 
better I am every day weaker than the last, unable to see more 
than one person a day, and quite exhausted by half an hour's con- 
versation. I hope to be a little better before your arrival, dearest 
friend, because I must see you ; but any stranger — even Mr. Haw- 
thorne — is quite out of the question. 

You may imagine how kind dear Mr. Bennoch has been all 
through this long trial, next after John Ruskin and his admirable 
father the kindest of all my friends, and that is saying much. 

God bless you. Love to all my friends, poets, prosers, and the 

dear , who are that most excellent thing, readers. I wonder if 

you ever received a list of people to whom to send one or other of 
my works? I wrote such with little words in my own hand, but 
writing is so painful and difficult, and I am always so uncertain of 
your getting my letters, that I cannot attempt to send another. 
There was one for Mrs. Sparks. I am sure of liking Dr. Parsons's 
book, — quite sure. Once again, God bless you! Little Henry 
Krows a nice boy. 

Ever most affectionately yours, M. R. M. 

SwALLOWFiEU), July 12, 1854. 

Dearest Mr. Fields : Our excellent friend Mr. Bennoch will 
have told you from how painful a state of anxiety your most wel- 
come letter relieved us. You have done quite right, my beloved 
friend, in returning to Boston. The voyage, always so trying to 
you, would, with your health so deranged, have been most danger- 
ous, and next year you will find all your friends, except one, as 
happy to see and to welcome you. Even if you had arrived now 
our meeting would have been limited to minutes. Dr. Parsons will 
tell you that fresh feebleness in a person so long tried and so aged 
(sixty-seven) must have a speedy termination. May Heaven pro- 
long your valuable life, dear fi-iend, and grant that you may be 03 
happy yourself as you have always tried to render others ! 






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MISS MITFORD. 345 

I rejoice to hear wheat you tell me of " Atherton." Here the 
reception has been most warm and cordial. Every page of it was 
written three times over, so that I spared no pains, but I was 
nearly killed by the terrible haste in which it was finished, and I do 
believe that many of the sheets were sent to me without ever being 
read in the office. I have corrected one copy for the third English 
edition, but I cannot undertake such an effort again, so, if (as I ven- 
ture to beheve) it be destined to be often reprinted by you, you 
must correct it from that edition. I hope you sent a copy to Mr. 
Whittier from me. I had hoped you would bring one to Mr. Haw- 
thorne and Mr. De Quincey, but I must try what I can do with Mr. 
Hurst, and must depend on you for assuring these valued friends 
tliat it was not neglect or ingratitude on my part. 

Mr. Boner, my dear and valued friend, wishes you and dear Mr. 
Ticknor to print his " Chamois-Hunting " from a second edition which 
Chapman and Hall are bringing out. I sent my copy of the work 
to Mr. Bennoch when we were expecting you, that you might see 
it. It is a really excellent book, full of interest, with admirable 
plates, which you could have, and, speaking in your interest, as 
much as in his, I firmly believe that it would answer to you in 
money as well as in credit to bring it out in America. Also Mrs. 
Browning (while in Italy) wrote to me to inquire if you would 
like to bring out a new poem by her, and a new work by her hus- 
band. I told her that I could not doubt it, but that she had better 
write duplicate letters to London and to Boston. Our poor little 
boy is here for his holidays. His excellent mother and step-father 
have nursed me rather as if they had been my children than my 
servants. Everybody has been most kind. The champagne, which 
I believe keeps me alive, is dear Mr. Bennoch's present ; but you 
will understand how ill I am when I tell you that my breath is so 
much aiFected by the shghtest exertion that I cannot bear even to 
be lifted into bed, but have spent the last eight nights sitting up, 
with my feet supported on a leg-rest. This from exhaustion, not 
from disease of the lungs. 

Give the enclosed to Dr. Parsons. You know what I have 
always thought of his genius. In my mind no poems ever crossed 
the Atlantic which approached his stanzas on Dante and on the 
death of Webster, and yet you have great poets too. Think how 
glad and proud I am to hear of the honor he has done me. I wish 
you had transcribed the verses. 

God bless you, my beloved friend ! Say everything for me to all 
my dear friends, to Dr. Parsons, to Dr. Holmes, to Mr. Whittier, to 
15* 



346 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Professor Longfellow, to Mr. Taylor, to Mr. Stoddard, to Mrs. 
Sparks, and above all to the excellent Mr. Ticknor and the dear 

W s. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

SwAliOWFiELD, July 23, 1854. 

Mt vert dear Friend : This is a sort of postscript to my last, 

written instantly on the receipt of yours and sent through Mr. . 

I hope you received it, for he is so impetuous that I alvs^ays a little 
doubt his care ; at least it w^as when sent through him that the loss 
of letters to and fro took place. However, I enjoined him to be 
careful this time, and he assured me that he was so. 

The purport of this is to add the name of my friend, Mr. Willmott, 
to the authors who wish for the advantage of your firm as their 
American publishers. I have begged him to write to you himself, 
and I hope he has done so, or that he will do so. But he is staying 
at Richmond with sick relatives, and I am not sure. Tou know 
his works, of course. They are becoming more and more popular 
in England, and he is writing better and better. The best critical 
articles in The Times are by him. He is eminently a scholar, and 
yet full of anecdote of the most amusing sort, with a memory like 
Scott, and a charming habit of applying his knowledge. His writ- 
ings become more and more like his talk, and I am confident that 
you would find his works not only most creditable, but most profit- 
able. I would not recommend you to each other if it were not for 
your mutual advantage, so far as my poor judgment goes. On the 
25th my Dramatic Works are to be published here. I hope they 
have sent you the sheets. 

I have not heard yet from any American friend, except your 
delightful letter and one fi-om Grace Greenwood, but I hope I shall. 
I prize the good word of such persons as Drs. Parsons and Holmes 
and Professor Longfellow and John Whittier and many others. I 
am still very ill. 

The Brownings remain this year in Italy. If it be very hot, they 
will go for a month or two to tiae Baths of Lucca, but their home 
is Florence. She has taken a fancy to an American female sculptor, 
— a girl of twenty-two, — a pupil of Gibson's, who goes with the 
rest of the fraternity of the studio to breakfast and dine at a cafe, 
and yet keeps her character. Also she believes in all your rappings. 

God be with you, my very dear friend. I trust you are quite 
recovered. 

Always affectionately yours, M. R. M. 



MISS MITFORD. 347 

SWALLOWFIELD, August 21, 1854. 

Mr DEAR Mr. Fields : Mr. Bayard Taylor having sent me a most 
interesting letter, but no address, I trouble you -with my reply. 
Read it, and you will perhaps understand that I am declining day by 
day, and that, humanly speaking, the end is very near. Perhaps 
there may yet be time for an ansv^^er to this 

I believe that one reason for your not quite understanding my ill- 
ness is, that you, if you have seen long and great sickness at all, which 
is doubtful, have seen it with an utter prostration of the mind and the 
spirits, — that your women are languid and querulous, and never 
dream of bearing up against bodily evils by an effort of the mind. 
Even now, when half an hour's visit is utterly forbidden, and half 
that time leaves me panting and exhausted, I never mention (except 
forced into it by your evident disbelief) my own illness either in 
speaking or writing, — never, except to answer Mr. May's questions, 
or to join my beloved friend, Mr. Pearson, in thanking God for the 
visitation which I humbly hope Avas sent in his mercy to draw me 
nearer to him ; may he grant me grace to use it ! — for the rest, 
whilst the intelligence and the sympathy are vouchsafed to me, I 
will write of others, and give to my friends, as far as in me lies, the 
thoughts which would hardly be more worthily bestowed on my 
own miserable body. 

You will be sorry to find that the poor Talfourds are likely to be 
very poor. A Reading attorney has run away, cheating half the 
town. He has carried off" £ 4,000 belonging to Lady Talfourd, and 
she herself tells my friend, William Harness (one of her kindest 
friends), that that formed the principal part of the Judge's small 
savings, and, together with the sum for which he had insured his life 
(only £ 5,000), was all which they had. Now there are five young 
people, — his children, — the widow and an adopted niece, seven in 
all, accustomed to every sort of luxury and indulgence. The only 
glimpse of hope is, that the eldest son held a few briefs on circuit 
and went through them creditably; but it takes many years in 
England to win a barrister's reputation, and the poorer our young 
men are the more sure they are to marry. Add the strange fact 
that since the father's death (he having reserved his copyrights) not 
a single copy of any of his books has been sold I A fortnight ago I 
had a great fright respecting Miss Martineau, which still continues. 
James Payn, who is living at the Lakes, and to whom she has been 
most kind, says he fears she will be a great pecuniary sufferer by 

. I only hope that it is a definite sum, and no general security 

or partnership, — even that will be bad enough for a woman of her 



348 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

age, and so hard a worker, who intended to give herself rest ; but 
observe these are only fears. I know nothing. The Brownings are 
detained in Italy, she tells me, for want of money, and cannot even 
get to Lucca. This is my bad news, — 0, and it is very bad that 
sweet Mrs. Kingsley must stay two years in Devonshire and cannot 
come home. I expect to see him this week. John Raskin is with 
his father and mother in Switzerland, constantly sending me tokens 
of friendship. Everybody writes or sends or comes ; never was 
such kindness. The Bennochs are in Scotland. He sends me 
charming letters, having, I believe, at last discovered what every 
one else has known long. Remember me to Mr. Ticknor. Say 
everything to my Athenian friends all, especially to Dr. Holmes 
and Dr. Parsons. 

Ever, dear friend, your affectionate 

M. R. M. 

September 26, 1854. 

Mr VERT DEAR Friend : Tour most kind and interesting letter hag 
just arrived, with one from our good friend, Mr. Bennoch, announcing 
the receipt of the £ 50 bill for " Atherton." More welcome even 
as a sign of the prosperity of the book in a country where I have 
so many friends and which I have always loved so well, than as 
money, although in that way it is a far greater comfort than you 
probably guess, this very long and very severe illness obliging me to 
keep a third maid-servant. I get no sleep, — not on an average an 
hour a night, — and require perpetual change of posture to prevent 
the skin giving way still more than it does, and forming what we 
emphatically call bed-sores, although I sit up night and day, and 
have no other relief than the being, to a slight extent, shifted from 
one position to another in the chair that I never quit. Besides this, 
there are many other expenses. I tell you this, dear friend, that 
Mr. Ticknor and yourself may have the satisfaction of knowing that, 
besides all that you have done for many years for my gratification, 
you have been of substantial use in this emergency. In spite of 
all this illness, after being so entirely given over that dear Mr. 
Pearson, leaving me a month ago to travel with Arthur Stanley 
for a month, took a final leave of me, I have yet revived greatly 
during these last three weeks. I owe this, under Providence, to 
my admirable friend, Mr. May, who, instead of abandoning the 
stranded ship, as is common in these cases, has continued, although 
six miles off, and driving four pair of horses a day, ay, and while 
himself hopeless of my case, to visit me constantly and to watch 



MISS MITFORD. 349 

every symptom, and exhaust every resource of his great art, as 
if his ovs^n fame and fortune depended on the result. One kind 
but too sanguine friend, Mr. Bennoch, is rather over-hopeful about 
this amendment, for I am still in a state in which the slightest 
falling back would carry me off, and in which I can hardly think 
it possible to weather the winter. If that incredible contingency 
should arise, what a happiness it would be to see you in A-pril! 
But I must content myself with the charming little portrait you 
have sent me, which is your very self Thank you for it over 
and over. Thank you, too, for the batch of notices on " Ather- 
ton." .... 

Dr. Parsons's address is very fine, and makes me still more desire 
to see his volume ; and the letter from Dr. Holmes is charming, so 
clear, so kind, and so good. If I had been a boy, I would have fol- 
lowed their noble profession. Three such men as Mr. May, Dr. 
Parsons, and Dr. Holmes are enough to confirm the predilection that 
I have always had for the art of healing. 

I have no good news to tell you of dear Mr. K . His sweet 

wife (Mr. Ticknor will remember her) has been three times at 
death's door since he saw her here, and must spend at least two 
winters more at Torquay. But I don't believe that he could stay 
here even if she were well. Bramshill has fallen into the hands of 
a Puseyite parson, who, besides that craze, which is so flagrant as to 

have made dear Mr. K forbid him his pulpit, is subject to fits of 

raving madness, — one of those most dangerous lunatics whom an age 
(in which there is a great deal of false humanity) never shuts up until 
some terrible crime has been committed. (A celebrated mad-doctor 
said the other day of this very man, that he had " homicidal mad- 
ness.") You may fancy what such a Squire, opposing him in every 

way, is to the rector of the parish. Mr. K told me last winter 

that he was driving him mad, and I am fully persuaded that he would 
make a large sacrifice of income to exchange his parish. To make up 
for this, he is working himself to death, and I greatly fear that his 
excess of tobacco is almost equal to the opium of Mr. De Quincey. 
With his temperament this is full of danger. He was only here for 
two or three days to settle a new curate, but he walked over to see 
me, and I will take care that he receives your message. His regard 
for me is, I really believe, sincere and very warm. Remember that 
all this is in strict confidence. The kindness that people show to 
me is something surprising. I have not deserved it, but I receive it 
most gratefully. It touches one's very heart. Will you say every- 
thing for me to my many kind fi"iends, too many to name ? I had a 



350 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

kind letter from Mrs. Sparks the other day. The poets I ding to 
while I can hold a pen. God bless you. 

Ever yours, M. E. M. 

Can you contrive to send a copy of your edition of " Atherton " 
to Mr. Hawthorne ? Pray, dear friend, do if you can. 

October 12, 1854. 
My very dear Friend : I can hardly give you a greater proof 
of affection, than in telhng you that your letter of yesterday affected 
me to tears, and that I thanked Grod for it last night in my prayers ; 
so much a mercy does it seem to me to be still beloved by one 
whom I have always loved so much. I thank you a thousand times 
for that letter and for the book. I enclose you my own letter to 
dear Dr. Parsons. Read it before giving it to him. I could not 
help being amused at his having appended my name to a poem in 
some sort derogating from the fame of the only Frenchman who is 
worthy to be named after the present great monarch. I hope I 
have not done wrong in confessing my faith. Holding back an 
opinion is often as much a falsehood as the actual untruth itself, and 
so I think it would be here. Now we have the book, do you re- 
member through whom you sent the notices ? If you do, let me 

know. You will see by my letter to Dr. Parsons that dined 

here yesterday, under K 's auspices. He invited himself for three 

days, — luckily I have Mr. Pearson to take care of him, — and still 
more luckily I told hira frankly yesterday that three days would be 
too much, for I had nearly died last night of fatigue and exhaustion 
and their consequences. To-night I shall leave all to my charming 
friend. There is nobody hke John Ruskin for refinement and elo- 
quence. You will be glad to hear that he has asked me for a letter 
to dear Mr. Bennoch to help him in his schools of Art, — I mean 
with advice. This will, I hope, bring our dear friend out of the 
set he is in, and into that where I wish to see him, for John Rus- 
kin must always fill the very highest position. God bless you all, 
dear friends! 

Ever most affectionately yours, M. R. M. 

Love to all my friends. 

You have given me a new motive for clinging to life by coming 
to England in April. Till this pull-back yesterday, I was better, 
although still afraid of being lifted into bed, and with small hope 
of getting alive through the winter, God bless you 1 



MISS MITFORD. 351 

October 18, 1854. 
My vert dear Friend : Another copy of dear Dr, Parsons's 
Dook has arrived, with a charming, most charming letter from liim, 
and a copy of your edition of " Atherton." It is very nicely got up 
indeed, the portrait the best of any engraving that has been made 
of me, at least, any recent engraving. May I have a few copies of 
that engraving when you come to England ? And if I should be 

gone, will you let poor K have one ? The only thing I lament 

in the American " Atherton " is that a passage that I wrote to add to 
that edition has been omitted. It was to the purport of my having 
a peculiar pleasure in the prospect of that reprint, because few 
things could be so gratifying to me as to find my poor name con- 
joined with those of the great and liberal publishers, for one of 
whom I entertain so much respect and esteem, and for the other so 
true and so hvely an aflfection. The little sentence was better 
turned much, but that was the meaning. No doubt it was in one 
of my many missing letters. I even think I sent it twice, — I 
should greatly have liked that little paragraph to be there. May 
I ask you to give the enclosed to dear Dr. Parsons ? There 
are noble lines in his book, which gains much by being known. 
Dear John P^uskin was here when it arrived, and much pleased with 
it on turning over the leaves, and he is the most fastidious of men. 
I must give him the copy. His praise is indeed worth having. I 
am as when I wrote last. God bless you, beloved friend. 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 

December 23, 1854. 

Your dear affectionate letter, dearest and kindest friend, would 
have given me unmingled pleasure had it conve3'ed a better account 
of your business prospects. Here, from what I can gather, and from 
the sure sign of all works of importance being postponed, the trade 
is in a similar state of depression, caused, they say, by this war, 
which but for the wretched imbecility of our ministers could never 
have assumed so alarming an appearance. Whether we shall re- 
cover from it, God only knows. My hope is in Louis Napoleon ; 
but that America will rally seems certain enough. She has elbow- 
room, and, moreover, she is not unused to rapid transitions from high 
prosperity to temporary difficulty, and so back agairu Moreover, 

dear friend, I have faith in you God bless you, my dear 

friend ! May he send to both of you health and happiness and 
length of days, and so much of this world's goods as is needful to 
prevent anxiety and insure comfort I have known many rich 



352 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

people in my time, and the result has convinced me that with great 
wealth some deep black shadow is as sure to walk, as it is to follow 
the bright sunshine. So I never pray for more than the blessed 
enough for those whom I love best. 

And very dearly do I love my American friends, — you best of 
all, — but all very dearly, as I have cause. Say this, please, to Dr. 
Parsons and Dr. Holmes (admiring their poems is a sort of touch- 
stone of taste with me, and very, very many stand the test well), 
and dear Bayard Taylor, a man soundest and sweetest the nearer 
one gets to the kernel, and good, kind John Whittier, who has the 
fervor of the poet ingrafted into the tough old Quaker stock, and 
Mr. Stoddard, and Mrs. Lippincott, and Mrs. Sparks, and the Phila- 
delphia Poetess, and dear Mr. and Mrs. W , and your capital 

critics and orators. Remember me to all who think of me ; but keep 
the choicest tenderness for yourself and your wife. 

Do you know those books which pretend to have been written 
from one hundred to two hundred years ago, — " Mary Powell " 
(Milton's Courtship), " Cherry and Violet," and the rest ? Their fault 
is that they are too much alike. The authoress (a Miss Manning) 
sent me some of them last winter, with some most interesting letters. 
Then for many months I ceased to hear from her, but a few weeks 
ago she sent me her new Christmas book, — " The Old Chelsea Bun 
House," — and told me she was dying of a frightful internal com- 
plaint. She suffers martyrdom, but bears it like a saint, and her let- 
ters are better than all the sermons in the world. May God grant 
me the same cheerful submission ! I try for it and pray that it be 
granted, but I have none of the enthusiastic glow of devotion, so 
real and so beautiful in Miss Manning. My faith is humble and 
lowly, — not that I have the slightest doubt, — but I cannot get her 
rapturous assurance of acceptance. My friend, William Harness, got 

me to employ our kind little friend, Mr. , to procure for him 

Judge Edmonds's " Spiritualism." What an odious book it is ! there 
is neither respect for the dead nor the living. Mrs. Browning be- 
lieves it all ; so does Bulwer, who is surrounded by mediums who 
summon his dead daughter. It is too frightful to talk about. Mr. 
May and Mr. Pearson both asked me to send it away, for fear of its 
seizing upon my nerves. I get weaker and weaker, and am become 
a mere skeleton. Ah, dear friend, come when you may, you will 
find only a g/xve at Swallowfield. Once again, Grod bless you and 
yours I 

Ever yours, M. R. M. 



''BARRY CORNWALL'' 

AND SOME OF HIS FRIENDS. 



"All, all are gone, the old familiar faces?^ 

CHARLES LAMB. 

" Old Acquaintance, shall the nights 
Yon and I once talked together. 
Be forgot like common things V^ 



"■ His thoughts half hid in golden dreams. 
Which make thrice fair the songs and streams 
Of Air and Earth:'' 



*' Song should breathe of scents and flowers ; 
Song should like a river flow ; 
Song should bring back scenes and hours 
That we leaved, — ah, long ago ! " 

BARRY CORNWATJ- 



VII. 

"BAEEY COENWALL" 

AND SOME OF HIS FRIENDS. 

THEEE is no portrait in my possession more satisfac- 
tory than the small one of Barry Cornwall, made 
purposely for me in England, from life. It is a thor- 
oughly honest resemblance. 

I first saw the poet five-and-twenty years ago, in his 
own house in London, at No. 13 Upper Harley Street, 
Cavendish Square. He was then declining into the vale 
of years, but his mind was still vigorous and young. 
My letter of introduction to him was written by Charles 
Sumner, and it proved sufficient for the beginning of a 
friendship which existed through a quarter of a century. 
My last interview with him occurred in 1869. I found 
him then quite feeble, but full of his old kindness and 
geniality. His speech was somewhat difficult to follow, 
for he had been slightly paralyzed not long before ; but 
after listening to him for half an hour, it was easy to 
understand nearly every word he uttered. He spoke with 
warm feeling of Longfellow, who had been in London 
during that season, and had called to see his venerable 
friend before proceeding to the Continent. " Was n't it 
good of him," said the old man, in his tremulous voice, 
" to think of me before he had been in town twenty-four 
hours ? " He also spoke of his dear companion, John 
Kenyon, at whose house we had often met in years past, 
and he called to mind a breakfast party there, saying 



356 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

with deep feeling, " And you and I are the only ones now- 
alive of all who came together that happy morning ! " 

A few months ago * at the great age of eighty-seven, 
Bryan Waller Procter, familiarly and honorably known in 
English literature for sixty years past as " Barry Corn- 
wall," calmly "fell on sleep." The schoolmate of Lord 
Byron and Sir Eobert Peel at Harrow, the friend and 
companion of Keats, Lamb, Shelley, Coleridge, Landor, 
Hunt, Talfourd, and Eogers, the man to whom Thackeray 
" affectionately dedicated " his " Vanity Fair," one of the 
kindest souls that ever gladdened earth, has now joined 
the great majority of England's hallowed sons of song. 
No poet ever left behind him more fragrant memories, 
and he will always be thought of as one whom his con- 
temporaries loved and honored. No harsh word will ever 
be spoken by those who have known him of the author of 
" Marcian Colonna," " Mirandola," " The Broken Heart," 
and those charming lyrics which rank the poet among the 
first of his class. His songs will be sung so long as 
music wedded to beautiful poetry is a requisition any- 
where. His verses have gone into the Book of Fame, 
and such pieces as " Touch us gently. Time," " Send down 
thy winged Angel, God," " King Death," " The Sea," and 
" Belshazzar is King," will long keep his memory green. 
Who that ever came habitually into his presence can for- 
get the tones of his voice, the tenderness in his gray 
retrospective eyes, or the touch of his sympathetic hand 
laid on the shoulder of a friend ! The elements were 
indeed so kindly mixed in him that no bitterness or 
rancor or jealousy had part or lot in his composition. 
No distinguished person was ever more ready to help for- 
ward the rising and as yet nameless literary man or 
woman who asked his counsel and warm-hearted suffrage. 
• October, 1874. 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 357 

His mere presence was sunshine to a new-comer into the 
world of letters and criticism, for he was always quick 
to encourage, and slow to disparage anybody. Indeed, to 
be human only entitled any one who came near him to 
receive the gracious bounty of his' goodness and courtesy. 
He made it the happiness of his life never to miss, when- 
ever opportunity occurred, the chance of conferring pleas- 
ure and gladness on those who needed kind words and 
substantial aid. 

His equals in literature venerated and loved him. 
Dickens and Thackeray never ceased to regard him with 
the deepest feeling, and such men as Browning and Ten- 
nyson and Carlyle and Forster rallied about him to the 
last. He was the delight of all those interesting men 
and women who habitually gathered around Eogers's 
famous table in the olden time, for his manner had in it 
all the courtesy of genius, without any of that chance 
asperity so common in some literary circles. The shyness 
of a scholar brooded continually over him and made him 
reticent, but he was never silent from ill-humor. His 
was that true modesty so excellent in ability, and so rare 
in celebrities petted for a long time in society. His was 
also that happy alchemy of mind which transmutes disa- 
greeable things into golden and ruby colors like the dawn. 
His temperament was the exact reverse of Fuseli's, who 
complained that " nature put him out." A beautiful 
spirit has indeed passed away, and the name of " Barry 
Cornwall," beloved in both hemispheres, is now sanctified 
afresh by the seal of eternity so recently stamped upon it. 

It was indeed a privilege for a young American, on his 
first travels abroad, to have " Barry Cornwall " for his 
host in London. As I recall the memorable days and 
nights of that long-ago period, I wonder at the good for- 
tune which brought me into such relations with him, and 



358 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

I linger with profound gratitude over his many acts of 
unmerited kindness. One of the most intimate rambles 
I ever took with him was in 1851, when we started one 
morning from a book-shop in Piccadilly, where we met 
accidentally, I had been in London only a couple of 
days, and had not yet called upon him for lack of time. 
Several years had elapsed since we had met, but he began 
to talk as if we had parted only a few hours before. At 
first I thought his mind was impaired by age, and that 
he had forgotten how long it was since we had spoken 
together. I imagined it possible that he mistook me for 
some one else ; but very soon I found that his memory 
was not at fault, for in a few minutes he began to ques- 
tion me about old friends in America, and to ask for in- 
formation concerning the probable sea-sick horrors of an 
Atlantic voyage. "I suppose," said he, "knowing your 
infirmity, you found it hard work to stand on your imma- 
terial legs, as Hood used to call Lamb's quivering limbs." 
Sauntering out' into the street, he went on in a quaintly 
humorous way to imagine what a rough voyage must be 
to a real sufferer, and thus walking gayly along, we came 
into Leadenhall Street. There he pointed out the office 
where his old friend and fellow-magazinist, " Elia," spent 
so many years of hard work from ten untO four o'clock of 
every day. Being in a mood for reminiscence, he de- 
scribed the Wednesday evenings he used to spend with 
" Charles and Mary " and their friends around the old 
" mahogany-tree " ia Eussell Street. I remember he tried 
to give me an idea of how Lamb looked and dressed, and 
how he stood bending forward to welcome his guests as 
they arrived in his humble lodgings. Procter thought 
nothing unimportant that might serve in any way to 
illustrate character, and so he seemed to wish that I 
might get an exact idea of the charming person both of 
us prized so ardently and he had known so intimately. 



CHAKLKS ANJ) MARY LAM1 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 359 

Speaking of Lamb's habits, be said he had never known 
his friend to drink immoderately except upon one occa- 
sion, and he observed that " Elia," hke Dickens, was a 
small and delicate eater. With faltering voice he told 
me of Lamb's "givings away" to needy, impoverished 
friends whose necessities were yet greater than his own. 
His secret charities were constant and unfailing, and no 
one ever suffered hunger when he was by. He could not 
endure to see a fellow-creature in want if he had the 
means to feed him. Thinking, from a depression of 
spirits which Procter in his young manhood was once 
laboring under, that perhaps he was in want of money. 
Lamb looked him earnestly in the face as they were 
walking one day in the country together, and blurted out, 
in his stammering way, " My dear boy, I have a hundred- 
pound note in my desk that I really don't know what to 
do with : oblige me by taking it and getting the con- 
founded thing out of my keeping." " I was in no need 
of money," said Procter, " and I declined the gift ; but it 
was hard work to make Lamb believe that I was not in 
an impecunious condition." 

Speaking of Lamb's sister Mary, Procter quoted Haz- 
litt's saying that " Mary Lamb was the most rational and 
wisest woman he had ever been acquainted with." As 
we went along some of the more retired streets in the old 
city, we had also, I remember, much gossip about Cole- 
ridge and his manner of reciting his poetry, especially 
when " Elia " happened to be among the listeners, for the 
philosopher put a high estimate upon Lamb's critical 
judgment. The author of " The Ancient Mariner " always 
had an excuse for any bad habit to which he was him- 
self addicted, and he told Procter one day that perhaps 
snuff was the final cause of the human nose. In con- 
nection with Coleridge we had much reminiscence of such 
interesting persons as the Novellos, Martin Bumey, Tal- 



360 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

fourd, and Crabb Eobinson,. and a store of anecdotes in 
which Haydon, Manning, Dyer, and Godwin figured at 
full length. In course of conversation I asked my com- 
panion if he thought Lamb had ever been really in love, 
and he told me interesting things of Hester Savory, a 
young Quaker girl of Pentonville, who inspired the poem 
embalming the name of Hester forever, and of Fanny 
Kelly, the actress with " the divine plain face," who will 
always live in one of "Elia's" most exquisite essays. 
" He had a reverence for the sex," said Procter, " and there 
were tender spots in his heart that time could never en- 
tirely cover up or conceal." 

During our walk we stepped into Christ's Hospital, 
and turned to the page on its record book where together 
we read this entry : " October 9, 1782, Charles Lamb, aged 
seven years, son of John Lamb, scrivener, and Elizabeth 
his wife." 

It was a lucky morning when I dropped in to bid 
" good morrow " to the poet as I was passing his house 
one day, for it was then he took from among his treasures 
and gave to me an autograph letter addressed to himself 
by Charles Lamb in 1829. I found the dear old man 
alone and in his library, sitting at his books, with the 
windows wide open, letting in the spring odors. Quot- 
ing, as I entered, some lines from Wordsworth embalming 
May mornings, he began to talk of the older poets who 
had worshipped nature with the ardor of lovers, and his 
eyes lighted up with pleasure when I happened to remem- 
ber some almost forgotten stanza from England's " Heli- 
con." It was an easy transition from the old bards to 
"Elia," and he soon went on in his fine enthusiastic way 
to relate several anecdotes of his eccentric friend. As I 
rose to take leave he said, — 

" Have I ever given you cue of Lamb's letters to carry 
home to America ? " 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 361 

" 'No," I replied, " and you must not part with the least 
scrap of a note in ' Elia's ' handwriting. Such things are 
too precious to be risked on a sea-voyage to another hem- 
isphere." 

"America ought to share with England in these things," 
he rejoined ; and leading me up to a sort of cabinet in the 
library, he unlocked a drawer and got out a package of 
time-stained papers. "Ah," said he, as he turned over 
the golden leaves, "here is something you will like to 
handle." I unfolded the sheet, and lo ! it was in Keats's 
handwriting, the sonnet on first looking into Chapman's 
Homer. " Keats gave it to me," said Procter, " many, 
many years ago," and then he proceeded to read, in tones 
tremulous with delight, these undying lines : — 

" Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, 
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; 
Round many Western islands have I been 
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne ; 
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : 
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken, 
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise — 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

I sat gazing at the man who had looked on Keats in 
the flush of his young genius, and wondered at my good 
fortune. As the living poet folded up again the faded 
manuscript of the illustrious dead one, and laid it rever- 
ently in its place, I felt grateful for the honor thus vouch- 
safed to a wandering stranger in a foreign land, and wished 
that other and worthier votaries of English letters might 
have been present to share with me the boon of such an 
interview. Presently my hospitable friend, still rum' 

16 



362 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

maging among the past, drew out a letter, which was the 
one, he said, he had been looking after. " Cram it into 

your pocket," he cried, "for I hear coming down 

stairs, and perhaps she won't let you carry it off!" The 
letter is addressed to B. W. Procter, Esq., 10 Lincoln's 
Inn, New Square. I give the entire epistle here just as 
it stands in the original which Procter handed me that 
memorable May morning. He told me that the law ques- 
tion raised in this epistle was a sheer fabrication of 
Lamb's, gotten up by him to puzzle his young corre- 
spondent, the conveyancer. The coolness referred to be- 
tween himself and Eobinson and Talfourd, Procter said, 
was also a fiction invented by Lamb to caxry out his legal 
mystification. 

"Jan'y 19, 1829. 
" My dear Procter, — I am ashamed to have not taken the drift 
of your pleasant letter, which I find to have been pure invention. 
But jokes are not suspected in Boeotian Enfield. We are plain peo- 
ple, and our talk is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Be- 
sides I was a little out of sorts when I received it. The fact is, I 
am involved in a case which has fretted me to death, and I have no 
leliance except on you to extricate me. I am sure you will give me 
your best legal advice, having no professional friend besides but 
Robinson and Talfourd, with neither of whom at present I am on 
the best terms. My brother's widow left a will, made during the 
lifetime of my brother, in which I am named sole Executor, by 
"which she bequeaths forty acres of arable property, which it seems 
she held under Covert Baron, unknown to my Brother, to the heirs 
of the body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married daughter by her first 
husband, in fee simple, recoverable by fine — invested property, 
mind, for there is the difficulty — subject to leet and quit rent — in 
short, worded in the most guarded terms, to shut out the property 
from Isaac Dowden the husband. Intelligence has just come of the 
death of this person in India, where he made a will, entailing this 
property (which seem'd entangled enough already) to the heirs of 
his body, that should not be born of his wife ; for it seems by the 
Law in India natural children can recover. They have put the 
cause into Exchequer Process here, removed by Certiorari from the 
Native Courts, and the question is whether I should as Executor, try 



1 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 363 

the cause here, or again re-remove to the Supreme Sessions at Banga- 
lore, which I understand I can, or plead a hearing before the Privy 
Council here. As it involves all the little property of Elizabeth Dow- 
den, I am anxious to take the fittest steps, and what may be the least 
expensive. For God's sake assist me, for the case is so embarrassed 
that it deprives me of sleep and appetite. M. Bumey thinks there 
is a Case like it in Chapt. 170 Sect. 5 in Team's Contingent Remain- 
ders. Pray read it over with him dispassionately, and let me have 
the result. The complexity lies in the questionable power of the 
husband to alienate in usum enfeoffinents whereof he was only col- 
laterally seized, etc." 

[On the leaf at this place there are some words in 
another hand. — F.] 

" The above is some of M. Burney's memoranda, which he has 
left here, and you may cut out and give him. I had another favour 
to beg, which is the beggarliest of beggings. A few Lines of verse 
for a young friend's Album (six will be enough). M. Burney will 
tell you who she is I want 'em for. A girl of gold. Six lines — 

make 'em eight — signed Barry C . They need not be very 

good, as I chiefly want 'em as a foil to mine. But I shall be seri- 
ously obliged by any refuse scrap. We are in the last ages of the 
world, when St. Paul prophesied that women should be ' head- 
strong, lovers of their own wills, having Albums.' I fled hither to 
escape the Albumean persecution, and had not been in my new house 
24 hours, when the Daughter of the next house came in with a 
friend's Album to beg a contribution, and the following day inti- 
mated she had one of her own. Two more have sprung up since. 
If I take the wings of the morning and fly unto the uttermost parts 
of the earth, there will Albums be. New Holland has Albums. 
But the age is to be complied with. M. B. will tell you the sort of 
girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast what 
you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that 
cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliber- 
ate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. 
And if you have not burnt your returned letter pray re-send it me 
as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'T was a little unthink- 
ing of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those 
accursed Annuals I have become a by-word of infamy all over the 
kingdom. I have sicken'd decent women for asking me to write in 
Albums. There be ' dark jests' abroad, Master Cornwall, and some 



364 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

riddles may live to be clear'd up. And 't is n't every saddle is put 
on the right steed. And forgeries and false Gospels are not pecul- 
iar to the age following the Apostles. And some tubs don't stand 
on their right bottom. Which is all I wish to say in these ticklish 
Times — and so your servant, * 

" Chs. Lamb." 

At the age of seventy-seven Procter was invited to 
print his recollections of Charles Lamb, and his volume 
was welcomed in both hemispheres as a pleasant addition 
to " Eliana." During the last eighteen years of Lamb's 
life Procter knew him most intimately, and his chronicles 
of visits to the little gamboge-colored house in Enfield 
are charming pencillings of memory. When Lamb and 
his sister, tired of housekeeping, went into lodging and 

boarding with T W , their sometime next-door 

neighbor, — who. Lamb said, had one joke and forty 
pounds a year, upon which he retired in a green old age, 
— Procter still kept up his friendly visits to his old asso- 
ciate. And after the brother and sister moved to their 
last earthly retreat in Edmonton, where Charles died in 
1834, Procter still paid them regular visits of love and 
kindness. And after Charles's death, when Mary went 
to live at a house in St. John's Wood, her unfailing friend 
kept up his cheering calls there till she set out " for that 
unknown and silent shore," on the 20th of May, in 1847. 

Procter's conversation was full of endless delight to his 
friends. His " asides " were sometimes full of exquisite 
touches. I remember one evening when Carlyle was pres- 
ent and rattling on against American institutions, half 
comic and half serious, Procter, who sat near me, kept up 
a constant underbreath of commentary, taking exactly the 
other side. Carlyle was full of horse-play over the char- 
acter of George Washington, whom he never vouchsafed 
to call anything but George. He said our first President 
was a good surveyor, and knew how to measure timber, 
and that was about all. Procter kept whispering to me 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 365 

all the while Carlyle was discoursing, and going over 
Washington's fine traits to the disparagement of every- 
thing Carlyle was laying down as gospel. I was listen- 
ing to both these distinguished men at the same time, and 
it was one of the most curious experiences in conversation 
I ever happened to enjoy. 

I was once present when a loud-voiced person of qual- 
ity, ignorant and supercilious, was inveighing against the 
want of taste commonly exhibited by artists when they 
chose their wives, saying they almost always selected infe- 
rior women. Procter, sitting next to me, put his hand on 
my shoulder, and, with a look expressive of ludicrous pity 
and contempt for the idiotic speaker, whispered, "And yet 
Vandyck married the daughter of Earl Gower, poor fel- 
low ! " The mock solemnity of Procter's manner was 
irresistible. It had a wink in it that really embodied the 
genius of fun and sarcasm. 

Talking of the ocean with him one day, he revealed 
this curious fact : although he is the author of one of the 
most stirring and popular sea-songs in the language, — 

"The sea, the sea, the open sea ! " — 

he said he had rarely been upon the tossing element, hav- 
ing a great fear of being made ill by it. I think he told 
me he had never dared to cross the Channel even, and so 
had never seen Paris. He said, Kke many others, he de- 
lighted to gaze upon the waters from a safe place on land, 
but had a horror of living on it even for a few hours. I 
recalled to his recollection his own lines, — 

" I 'm on the sea ! I 'm on the sea ! 
I am where I would ever be," — 

and he shook his head, and laughingly declared I must 
have misquoted his words, or that Dibdin had written the 
piece and put " Barry Cornwall's " signature to it. We 
had, I remember, a great deal of fun over the poetical lies. 



366 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

as he called them, which bards in all ages had perpetrated 
in their verse, and he told me some stories of English 
poets, over which we made merry as we sat together in 
pleasant Cavendish Square that summer evening. 

His world-renowned song of "The Sea" he afterward 
gave me in his own handwriting, and it is still among my 
autographic treasures. 

It was Procter who first in my hearing, twenty-five 
years ago, put such an estimate on the poetry of Eobert 
Browning that I could not delay any longer to make ac- 
quaintance with his writings. I remember to have been 
startled at hearing the man who in his day had known so 
many poets declare that Browning was the peer of any 
one who had written in this century, and that, on the 
whole, his genius had not been excelled in his (Procter's) 
time. " Mind what I say," insisted Procter ; " Browning 
will make an enduring name, and add another supremely 
great poet to England." 

Procter could sometimes be prompted into describing 
that brilliant set of men and women who were in the habit 
of congregating at Lady Blessington's, and I well recollect 
his description of young N". P. Willis as he first appeared 
in her salon. " The young traveller came among us," said 
Procter, " enthusiastic, handsome, and good-natured, and 
took his place beside D'Orsay, Bulwer, Disraeli, and the 
other dandies as naturally as if he had been for years a 
London man about town. He was full of fresh talk con- 
cerning his own country, and we all admired his clever- 
ness in compassing so aptly all the little newnesses of 
the situation. He was ready on all occasions, a little too 
ready, some of the habitues of the salon thought, and they 
could not understand his cool and quiet-at-home manners. 
He became a favorite at first trial, and laid himself out 
determined to please and be pleased. His ever kind and 
thoughtful attention to others won him troops of friends, 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 367 

and I never can forget his unwearied goodness to a sick 
child of mine, with whom, night after night, he would sit 
by the bedside and watch, thus relieving the worn-out 
family in a way that was very tender and self-sacrificing." 
Of Lady Blessington's tact, kindness, and remarkable 
beauty Procter always spoke with ardor, and abated noth- 
ing from the popular idea of that fascinating person. He 
thought she had done more in her time to institute good 
feeling and social intercourse among men of letters than 
any other lady in England, and he gave her eminent 
credit for bringing forward the rising talent of the metrop- 
olis without waiting to be prompted by a public verdict. 
As the poet described her to me as she moved through 
her exquisite apartments, surrounded by all the luxuries 
that naturally connect themselves with one of her com- 
manding position in literature and art, her radiant and 
exceptional beauty of person, her frank and cordial man- 
ners, the wit, wisdom, and grace of her speech, I thought 
of the fair Giovanna of Naples as painted in "Bianca 
Visconti " : — 

" Gods ! what a light enveloped her ! 
Her beauty 
Was of that order that the universe 

Seemed governed by her motion 

The pomp, the music, the bright sun in heaven, 
Seemed glorious by her leave." 

One of the most agreeable men in London literary 
society during Procter's time was the companionable and 
ever kind-hearted John Kenyon. He was a man com- 
pacted of all the best qualities of an incomparable good- 
nature. His friends used to call him "the apostle of 
cheerfulness." He could not endure a long face under 
his roof, and declined to see the dark side of anything. 
He wrote verses almost like a poet, but no one surpassed 
him in genuine admiration for whatever was excellent in 
others. No happiness was so great to him as the confer- 



368 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

ring of happiness on others, and I am glad to write my- 
self his eternal debtor for much of my enjoyment in 
England, for he introduced me to many lifelong friend- 
ships, and he inaugurated for me much of that felicity 
which springs from intercourse with men and women 
whose books are the solace of our lifelong existence. 

Kenyon was Mrs. Browning's cousin, and in 1856 she 
dedicates "Aurora Leigh" to him in these affectionate 
terms : — 

" The words ' cousin ' and ' friend ' are constantly recurring in this 
poem, the last pages of which have been finished under the hospi- 
tality of your roof, my own dearest cousin and friend ; — cousin and 
friend, in a sense of less equality and greater disinterestedness than 

Eomne/s I venture to leave in your hands this book, the 

most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest con- 
victions upon Life and Art have entered ; that as, through my vari- 
ous efforts in literature and steps in life, you have believed in me, 
borne with me, and been generous to me, far beyond the common 
uses of mere relationship or sympathy of mind, so you may kindly 
accept, in sight of the public, this poor sign of esteem, gratitude, 
and affection from your unforgetting 

"E. B. B." 

How often have T seen Kenyon and Procter chirping 
together over an old quarto that had floated down from 
an early century, or rejoicing together over a well-worn 
letter in a family portfolio of treasures ! They were a 
pair of veteran brothers, and there was never a flaw in 
their long and loving intercourse. In a letter which 
Procter wrote to me in March, 1857, he thus refers to his 
old friend, then lately dead : " Everybody seems to be 
dying hereabouts, — one of my colleagues, one of my re- 
lations, one of my servants, three of them in one week, 
the last one in my own house. And now I seem fit for 
little else myself My dear old friend Kenyon is dead. 
There never was a man, take him for all in all, with more 
amiable, attractive qualities. A kind friend, a good master. 




/'/^/^^(s/^cl.PU^^. 



'^/^^n^^^?7Y 



I 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 369 

a generous and judicious dispenser of his wealth, honor- 
able, sweet-tempered, and serene, and genial as a sum- 
mer's day. It is true that he has left me a solid mark of 
his friendship. I did not expect anything ; but if to like 
a man sincerely deserved such a mark of his regard, I 
deserved it. I doubt if he has left one person who really 
liked him more than I did. Yes, one — I think one — a 

woman I get old and weak and stupid. That 

pleasant journey to Niagara, that dip into your Indian 
summer, all such thoughts are over. I shall never see 
Italy; I shall never see Paris. My future is before me, — 
a very limited landscape, with scarcely one old friend left 
in it. I see a smallish room, with a bow-window looking 
south, a bookcase full of books, three or four drawings, 
and a library chair and table (once the property of my 
old friend Kenyon — I am writing on the table now), 
and you have the greater part of the vision before you. 
Is this the end of all things ? I believe it is pretty much 
like most scenes in the fifth act, when the green (or 
black) curtain is about to drop and tell you that the play 
of Hamlet or of John Smith is over. But wait a httle. 
There will be another piece, in which John Smith the 
younger will figure, and quite eclipse his old, stupid, 
wrinkled, useless, time-slaughtered parent. The king is 
dead, — long live the king ! " 

Kenyon w^as very fond of Americans, Professor Ticknor 
and Mr. George S. Hillard being especially dear to him. 
I remember hearing him say one day that the " best pre- 
pared" young foreigner he had ever met, who had come 
to see Europe, was Mr. Hillard. One day at his dinner- 
table, in the presence of Mrs. Jameson, Mr. and Mrs. Car- 
lyle, Walter Savage Landor, Mr. and Mrs. Eobert Brown- 
ing, and the Procters, I heard him declare that one of the 
best talkers on any subject that might be started at the 
social board was the author of "Six Months in Italy." 

16* X 



370 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS, 

It was at a breakfast in Kenyon's house that I first 
met Walter Savage Landor, whose writings are full of 
verbal legacies to posterity. As I entered the room with 
Procter, Landor was in the midst of an eloquent harangue 
on the high art of portraiture. Procter had been lately 
sitting to a daguerreotypist for a picture, and Mrs. Jame- 
son, who was very fond of the poet, had arranged the 
camera for that occasion. Landor was holding the picture 
in his hand, declaring that it had never been surpassed as 
a specimen of that particular art. The grand-looking 
author of " Pericles and Aspasia " was standing in the 
middle of the room when we entered, and his voice 
sounded like an explosion of first-class artillery. Seeing 
Procter enter, he immediately began to address him com- 
pliments in high-sounding Latin. Poor modest Procter 
pretended to stop his ears that he might not Hsten to 
Landor's eulogistic phrases. Kenyon came to the rescue 
by declaring the breakfast had been waiting half an hour. 
When we arrived at the table Landor asked Procter to 
join him on an expedition into Spain which he was then 
contemplating. "No," said Procter, "for I cannot even 
' walk Spanish,' and having never crossed the Channel, I 
do not intend to begin now." 

"Never crossed the Channel!" roared Landor, — "never 
saw Napoleon Bonaparte ! " He then began to tell us 
how the young Corsican looked when he first saw him, 
saying that he had the olive complexion and roundness 
of face of a Greek girl ; that the consul's voice was deep 
and melodious, but untruthful in tone. While we were 
eating breakfast he went on to describe his Italian travels 
in early youth, telling us that he once saw Shelley and 
Byron meet in the doorway of a hotel in Pisa. Landor 
had lived in Italy many years, for he detested the climate 
of his native country, and used to say " one could only 
live comfortably in England who was rich enough to have 
a solar system of his own." 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 371 

The Prince of Carpi said of Erasmus he was so thin- 
skinned that a fly would draw blood from him. The 
author of the " Imaginary Conversations " had the same 
infirmity. A very little thing would disturb him for 
hours, and his friends were never sure of his equanimity. 
I was present once when a blundering friend trod unwit- 
tingly on his favorite prejudice, and Landor went off in- 
stanter like a blaspheming torpedo. There were three 
things in the world which received no quarter at his 
hands, and when in the slightest degree he scented hi/- 
pocrisy, pharisaism, or tyranny, straightway he became 
furious, and laid about him like a mad giant. 

Procter told me that when Landor got into a passion, 
his rage was sometimes uncontrollable. The fiery spirit 
knew his weakness, but his anger quite overmastered him 
in spite of himself. " Keep your temper, Landor," some- 
body said to him one day when he was raging. " That is 
just what I don't wish to keep," he cried ; " I wish to be 
rid of such an infamous, ungovernable thing. I don't 
wish to heep my temper." Whoever wishes to get a good 
look at Landor will not seek for it alone in John Forster's 
interesting life of the old man, admirable as it is, but will 
turn to Dickens's " Bleak House " for side glances at the 
great author. In that vivid story Dickens has made his 
friend Landor sit for the portrait of Lawrence Boythorn. 
The very laugh that made the whole house vibrate, the 
roundness and fulness of voice, the fury of superlatives, 
are all given in Dickens's best manner, and no one 
who has ever seen Landor for half an hour could pos- 
sibly mistake Boythorn for anybody else. Talking the 
matter over once with Dickens, he said, " Landor always 
took that presentation of himself in hearty good-humor, 
and seemed rather proud of the picture." This is Dick- 
ens's portrait : " He was not only a very handsome old 
gentleman, upright and stalwart, with a massive gray 



372 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

head, a fine composure of face when silent, a figure that 
might have become corpulent but for his being so con- 
tinually in earnest that he gave it no rest, and a chin that 
mifrht have subsided into a double chin but for the vehe- 
ment emphasis in which it was constantly required to 
assist ; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, 
so chivalrously polite, his face was lighted by a smile of 
so much sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain 
that he had nothing to hide, that really I could not help 
looking at him with equal pleasure, whether he smilingly 
conversed with Ada and me, or was led by Mr. Jarndyce 
into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up- his 
head like a bloodhound, and gave out that tremendous 
Ha! ha! ha!" 

Lander's energetic gravity, when he was proposing 
some colossal impossibility, the observant novelist would 
naturally seize on, for Dickens was always on the lookout 
for exaggerations in human language and conduct. It 
was at Procter's table I heard Dickens describe a scene 
which transpired after the publication of the " Old Curi- 
osity Shop." It seems that the first idea of Little Nell 
occurred to Dickens when he was on a birthday visit to 
Landor, then living in Bath. The old man was residing 
in lodgings in St. James Square, in that city, and ever 
after connected Little Nell with that particular spot. No 
character in prose fiction was a greater favorite with 
Landor, and one day, years after the story was published, 
he burst out with a tremendous emphasis, and declared 
the one mistake of his life was that he had not purchased 
the house in Bath, and then and there burned it to the 
ground, so that no meaner association should ever dese- 
crate the birthplace of Little Nell ! 

It was Procter's old schoolmaster (Dr. Drury, head- 
master of Harrow) who was the means of introducing 
Edmund Kean, the great actor, on the London staga 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 373 

Procter delighted to recall the many theatrical triumphs 
of the eccentric tragedian, and the memoir which he 
printed of Kean will always be read with interest. I 
heard the poet one evening describe the player most 
graphically as he appeared in Sir Giles Overreach in 
1816 at Drury Lane, when he produced such an effect on 
Lord Byron, who sat that night in a stage-box with Tom 
Moore. His lordship was so overcome by Kean's mag- 
nificent acting that he fell forward in a convulsive fit, 
and it was some time before he i€gained his wonted com- 
posure. Douglas Jerrold said that Kean's appearance in 
Shakespeare's Jew was hke a chapter out of Genesis, and 
all who have seen the incomparable actor speak of his 
tiger-like power and infinite gi'ace as unrivalled. 

At Procter's house the best of England's celebrated 
men and women assembled, and it was a kind of enchant- 
ment to converse with the ladies one met there. It was 
indeed a privilege to be received by the hostess herself, 
for Mrs. Procter was not only sure to be the most brill- 
iant person among her guests, but she practised habitually 
that exquisite courtesy toward all which renders even a 
stranger, unwonted to London drawing-rooms, free from 
awkwardness and that constraint which are almost in- 
separable from a first appearance. 

Among the persons I have seen at that house of ur- 
banity in London I distinctly recall old Mrs. Montague, 
the mother of Mrs. Procter. She had met Ptobert Burns 
in Edinburgh when he first came up to that city to bring 
out his volume of poems. " I have seen many a hand- 
some man in my time," said the old lady one day to us 
at dinner, "but never such a pair of eyes as young Piobbie 
Burns kept flashing from under his beautiful brow." Mrs. 
Montague was much interested in Charles Sumner, and 
predicted for him all the eminence of his after-position. 
With a certain other American visitor she had no patience. 



374 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

and spoke of him to me as a " note of interrogation, too 
curious to be comfortable." 

I distinctly recall Adelaide Procter as I first saw her 
on one of my early visits to her father's house. She was 
a shy, bright girl, and the poet drew my attention to her 
as she sat reading in a corner of the library. Looking 
at the young maiden, intent on her book, I remembered 
that exquisite sonnet in her father's volume, bearing date 
November, 1825, addressed to the infant just a month 
after her birth: — 

" Child of my heart ! My sweet, beloved First-born ! 
Thou dove who tidings bring'st of calmer hours ! 
Thou rainbow who dost shine when all the showers 
Are past or passing ! Rose which hath no thorn, 
No spot, no blemish, — pure and unforlom, 
Untouched, untainted ! my Flower of flowers ! 
More welcome than to bees are summer bowers, 
To stranded seamen life-assuring mom ! 
Welcome, a thousand welcomes ! Care, who clings 
Eound all, seems loosening now its serpent fold: 
New hope springs upward ; and the bright world seems 
Cast back into a youth of endless springs ! 
Sweet mother, is it so ? or grow I old. 
Bewildered in divine Elysian dreams ? " 

I whispered in the poet's ear my admiration of the son- 
net and the beautiful subject of it as we sat looking at 
her absorbed in the volume on her knees. Procter, in 
response, murmured some words expressive of his joy at 
having such a gift from God to gladden his affectionate 
heart, and he told me afterward what a comfort Adelaide 
had always been to his household. He described to me a 
visit Wordsworth made to his house one day, and how 
gentle the old man's aspect was when he looked at the 
children. "He took the hand of my dear Adelaide in 
his," said Procter, " and spoke some words to her, the rec- 
ollection of which helped, perhaps, with other things, to 
incline her to poetry," When a little cliild " the golden- 



*' BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 375 

tressed Adelaide," as the poet calls her in one of his 
songs, must often have heard her father read aloud his 
own poems as they came fresh from the fount of song, 
and the impression no doubt wrought upon her young 
imagination a spell she could not resist. On a sensitive 
mind like hers such a piece as the " Petition to Time " 
could not fail of producing its fuU effect, and no girl of 
her temperament would be unmoved by the music of 
words like these : — 

"Touch us gently, Time ! 

Let us glide adown thy stream 
Gently, as we sometimes glide 

Through a qviiet dream. 
Humble voyagers are we, 
Husband, wife, and children three. 
(One is lost, an angel, fled 
To the azure overhead.) 

*' Touch us gently. Time ! 

We 've not proud nor soaring wings : 
Our ambition, our content, 

Lie in simple things. 
Humble voyagers are we, 
O'er Life's dim unsounded sea, 
Seeking only some calm clime : 
Touch us gently, gentle Time ! " 

Adelaide Procter's name will always be sweet in the 
annals of English poetry. Her place was assured from 
the time when she made her modest advent, in 1853, in 
the columns of Dickens's " Household Words," and every- 
thing she wrote from that period onward until she died 
gave evidence of striking and peculiar talent. I have 
heard Dickens describe how she first began to proffer 
contributions to his columns over a feigned name, that 
of Miss Mary Berwick ; how he came to think that his 
unknown correspondent must be a governess ; how, as 
time went on, he learned to value his new contributor for 
her self-reliance and punctuality, — qualities upon which 



376 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Dickens always placed a high value ; how at last, going 
to dine one day with his old friends the Procters, he 
launched enthusiastically out in praise of Mary Berwick 
(the writer herself, Adelaide Procter, sitting at the table) ; 
and how the delighted mother, being in the secret, 
revealed, with tears of joy, the real name of the young 
aspirant. Although Dickens has told the whole story 
most feelingly in an introduction to Miss Procter's 
" Legends and Lyrics," issued after her death, to hear it 
from his own lips and sympathetic heart, as I have done, 
was, as may be imagined, something better even than 
reading his pathetic words on the printed page. 

One of the most interesting ladies in London literary 
society in the period of which I am writing was Mrs. 
Jameson, the dear and honored friend of Procter and 
his family. During many years of her later life she 
stood in the relation of consoler to her sex in England. 
Women in mental anguish needing consolation and coun- 
sel fled to her as to a convent for protection and guid- 
ance. Her published writings established such a claim 
upon her sympathy in the hearts of her readers that much 
of her time for twenty years before she died was spent in 
helping others, by correspondence and personal contact, 
to submit to the sorrows God had cast upon them. She 
believed, with Milton, that it is miserable enough to be 
blind, but still more miserable not to be able to bear 
blindness. Her own earlier life had been darkened by 
griefs, and she knew from a deep experience what it was 
to enter the cloud and stand waiting and hoping in the 
shadows. In her instructive and delightful society I 
spent many an hour twenty years ago in the houses of 
Procter and Rogers and Kenyon. Procter, knowing my 
admiration of the Kemble family, frequently led the con- 
versation up to that regal line which included so many 
men and women of genius. Mrs. Jameson was nevel 




V / 



^/^.-^^-z^-^/^-t.^-^^ y >^fs;-^? 




''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 377 

weary of being questioned as to the legitimate supremacy 
of Mrs. Siddons and her nieces, Fanny and Adelaide 
Kemble. While Eogers talked of Garrick, and Procter of 
Kean, she had no enthusiasms that were not bounded in 
by those fine spirits whom she had watched and wor- 
shipped from her earliest years. 

Now and then in the garden of life we get that special 
bite out of the sunny side of a peach. One of my own 
memorable experiences in that way came in this wise. I 
had heard, long before I went abroad, so much of the 
singing of the youngest child of the "Olympian dy- 
nasty," Adelaide Kemble, so much of a brief career 
crowded with triumphs on the lyric stage, that I longed, 
if it might be possible, to listen to the " true daughter 
of her race." The rest of her family for years had been, 
as it were, "nourished on Shakespeare," and achieved 
greatness in that high walk of genius ; but now came one 
who could interpret Mozart, Bellini, and Mercadante, one 
who could equal what Pasta and Mahbran and Persiani 
and Grisi had taught the world to understand and wor- 
ship. " Ah ! " said a friend, " if you could only hear /tea- 
sing ' Casta Diva ' ! " " Yes," said another, " and ' Auld 
Ptobin Gray ' ! " No wonder, I thought, at the universal 
enthusiasm for a vocal and lyrical artist who can alter- 
nate with equal power from "Casta Diva" to "Auld 
Eobin Gray." I must hear her ! She had left the stage, 
after a brief glory upon it, but as Madame Sartoris she 
sometimes sang at home to her guests. 

"We are invited to hear some music, this evening," 
said Procter to me one day, " and you must go with us." 
I went, and our hostess was the once magnificent prima 
donna ! At intervals throughout the evening, with a 
voice 

" That crowds and hurries and precipitates 
With thick fast warble its delicious notes," 



378 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

she poured out her full soul in melody. We all know 
her now as the author of that exquisite "Week in a 
French Country-House," and her fascinating book some- 
how always mingles itself in my memory with the en- 
chanted evening when I heard her sing. As she sat at 
the piano in all her majestic beauty, I imagined her a sort 
of later St. Cecilia, and could have wished for another 
Eaphael to paint her worthily. Henry Chorley, who was 
present on that memorable evening, seemed to be in a 
kind of nervous rapture at hearing again the supreme 
and willing singer. Procter moved away into a dim cor- 
ner of the room, and held his tremulous hand over his 
eyes. The old poet's sensitive spirit seemed at times to 
be going out on the breath of the glorious artist who was 
thrilling us all with her power. Mrs. Jameson bent for- 
ward to watch every motion of her idol, looking applause 
at every noble passage. Another lady, whom I did not 
know, was tremulous with excitement, and I could well 
imagine what might have taken place when the " impas- 
sioned chantress " sang and enacted Semiramide as I have 
heard it described. Every one present was inspired by 
her fine mien, as well as by her transcendent voice. 
Mozart, Eossini, Bellini, Cherubini, — how she flung her- 
self that night, with all her gifts, into their highest com- 
positions ! As she rose and was walking away from the 
piano, after singing an air from the "Medea" with a 
pathos that no musically uneducated pen like mine can 
or ouglit to attempt a description of, some one intercepted 
her and whispered a request. Again she turned, and 
walked toward the instrument like a queen among her 
admiring court, A flash of lightning, followed by a peal 
of thunder that jarred the house, stopped her for a 
moment on her way to the piano. A sudden summer 
tempest was gathering, and crash after crash made it im' 
possible for her to begin. As she stood waiting for the 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 379 

"elemental fury" to subside, her attitude was quite 
worthy of the niece of Mrs. Siddons. When the thunder 
had grown less frequent, she threw back her beautiful 
classic head and touched the keys. The air she had been 
called upon to sing was so wild and weird, a dead silence 
fell upon the room, and an influence as of terror pervaded 
the whole assembly. It was a song by Dessauer, which 
he had composed for her voice, the words by Tennyson. 
No one who was present that evening can forget how she 
broke the silence with 

" We were two daughters of one race," 

or how she uttered the words, 

" The wind is roaring in turret and tree." 

It was like a scene in a great tragedy, and then I fully 
understood the worship she had won as belonging only to 
those consummate artists who have arisen to dignify and 
ennoble the lyric stage. As we left the house Procter 
said, " You are in great luck to-night. I never heard her 
sing more divinely." 

The Poet frequently spoke to me of the old days when 
he was contributing to the "London Magazine," which 
fifty years ago was deservedly so popular in Great Britain. 
All the "best talent" (to use a modern advertisement 
phrase) wrote for it. Carlyle sent his papers on Schiller 
to be printed in it; De Quincey's "Confessions of an 
English Opium-Eater" appeared in its pages; and the 
essays of " Elia " came out first in that potent periodical ; 
Landor, Keats, and John Bowring contributed to it ; and 
to have printed a prose or poetical article in the " Lon- 
don " entitled a man to be asked to dine out anywhere 
in society in those days. In 1821 the proprietors began 
to give dinners in Waterloo Place once a month to their 
contributors, who, after the cloth was removed, were ex- 
pected to talk over the prospects of the magazine, and lay 



SSo YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

out the contents for next month.. Procter described to 
me the authors of his generation as they sat round the 
old "mahogany-tree" of that period. "Very social and 
expansive hours they passed in that pleasant room haK 
a century ago. Thither came stalwart Allan Cunning- 
ham, with his Scotch face shining with good-nature ; 
Charles Lamb, ' a Diogenes with the heart of a St. John ' ; 
Hamilton Eeynolds, whose good temper and vivacity were 
like condiments at a feast ; John Clare, the peasant-poet, 
simple as a daisy ; Tom Hood, young, silent, and grave, 
but who nevertheless now and then shot out a pun that 
damaged the shaking sides of the whole company; De 
Quincey, self-involved and courteous, rolling out his peri- 
ods with a pomp and splendor suited, perhaps, to a high 
Roman festival ; and with these sons of fame gathered 
certain nameless folk whose contributions to the great 
' London ' are now under the protection of that tremen- 
dous power which men call Oblivion." 

It was a vivid pleasure to hear Procter describe Edward 
Irving, the eccentric preacher, who made such a deep im- 
pression on the spirit of his time. He is now dislimned 
into space, but he was, according to all his thoughtful 
contemporaries, a " son of thunder," a " giant force of ac- 
tivity." Procter fully indorsed all that Carlyle has so 
nobly written of the eloquent man who, dying at forty- 
two, has stamped his strong personal vitality on the age 
in which he lived. 

Procter, in his younger days, was evidently much im- 
pressed by that clever rascal who, under the name of 
" Janus Weathercock," scintillated at intervals in the old 
"London Magazine." Wainwright — for that was his 
real name — was so brilliant, he made friends for a time 
among many of the first-class contributors to that once 
famous periodical ; but the Ten Commandments ruined 
all his prospects for life. A murderer, a forger, a thief, 



*' BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 381 

— in short, a sinner in general, — he came to grief rather 
early in his wicked career, and suffered penalties of the 
law accordingly, but never to the full extent of his re- 
markable deserts. I have heard Procter describe his per- 
sonal appearance as he came sparkling into the room, clad 
in undress military costume. His smart conversation 
deceived those about him into the belief that he had been 
an officer in the dragoons, that he had spent a large for- 
tune, and now condescended to take a part in periodical 
literature with the culture of a gentleman and the grace 
of an amateur. How this vapid charlatan in a braided 
surtout and prismatic necktie could so long veil his real 
character from, and retain the regard of, such men as 
Procter and Talfourd and Coleridge is amazing. Lamb 
calls him the " kind and light-hearted Janus," and thought 
he liked him. The contributors often spoke of his guile- 
less nature at the festal monthly board of the magazine, 
and no one dreamed that this gay and mock-smiling Lon- 
don cavalier was about to begin a career so foul and mon- 
strous that the annals of crime for centuries have no 
blacker pages inscribed on them. To secure the means 
of luxurious living without labor, and to pamper his 
dandy tastes, this lounging, lazy litterateur resolved to 
become a murderer on a large scale, and accompany his 
cruel poisonings with forgeries whenever they were most 
convenient. His custom for years was to effect policies 
of insurance on the lives of his relations, and then at the 
proper time administer strychnine to his victims. The 
heart sickens at the recital of his brutal crimes. On the 
life of a beautiful young girl named Abercrombie this 
fiendish wretch effected an insurance at various offices for 
£18,000 before he sent her to her account with the rest 
of his poisoned too-confiding relatives. So many heavily 
insured ladies dying in violent convulsions drew atten- 
tion to the gentleman who always called to collect the 



382 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

money. But why this consumate crimminal was not 
brought to justice and hung, my Lord Abinger never sat- 
isfactorily divulged. At last this polished Sybarite, who 
boasted that he always drank the richest Montepulciano, 
who could not sit long in a room that was not garlanded 
with flowers, who said he felt lonely in an apartment 
without a fine cast of the Venus de' Medici in it, — this 
self-indulgent voluptuary at last committed several for- 
geries on the Bank of England, and the Old Bailey ses- 
sions of July, 1837, sentenced him to transportation for 
life. While he was lying in Newgate prior to his depart- 
ure, with other convicts, to New South Wales, where he 
died, Dickens went with a former acquaintance of the 
prisoner to see him. They found him still possessed with 
a morbid self-esteem and a poor and empty vanity. All 
other feelings and interests were overwhelmed by an ex- 
cessive idolatry of self, and he claimed (I now quote his 
own words to Dickens) a soul whose nutriment is love, 
and its offspring art, music, divine song, and still holier 
philosophy. To the last this super-refined creature seemed 
undisturbed by remorse. What place can we fancy for 
such a reptile, and what do we learn from such a career ? 
Talfourd has so wisely summed up the whole case for us 
that I leave the dark tragedy with the recital of this sol- 
emn sentence from a paper on the culprit in the " Final 
Memorials of Charles Lamb": " Wainwright's vanity, nur- 
tured by selfishness and unchecked by religion, became a 
disease, amounting perhaps to monomania, and yielding 
one lesson to repay the world for his existence, viz. that 
there is no state of the soul so dangerous as that in which 
the vices of the sensualist are envenomed by the grovel- 
ling intellect of the scorner." 

One of the men best worth meeting in London, under 
any circumstances, was Leigh Hunt, but it was a special 
boon to find him and Procter together. I remember a 



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"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 383 

day in the summer of 1859 when Procter had a party of 
friends at dinner to meet Hawthorne, who was then on a 
brief visit to London. Among the guests were the Count- 
ess of , Kinglake, the author of " Eothen," Charles 

Sumner, then on liis way to Paris, and Leigh Hunt, the 
mercurial qualities of whose blood were even then per- 
ceptible in his manner. 

Adelaide Procter did not reach home in season to begin 
the dinner with us, but she came later in the evening, and 
sat for some time in earnest talk with Hawthorne. It 
was a " goodly companie," long to be remembered. Hunt 
and Procter were in a mood for gossip over the ruddy 
port. As the twilight deepened around the table, which 
was exquisitely decorated with flowers, the author of 
" Kimini " recalled to Procter's recollection other memo- 
rable tables where they used to meet in vanished days 
with Lamb, Coleridge, and others of their set long since 
passed away. As they talked on in rather low tones, I 
saw the two old poets take hands more than once at the 
mention of dead and beloved names. I recollect they 
had a good deal of fine talk over the great singers whose 
voices had delighted them in bygone days ; speaking with 
rapture of Pasta, whose tones in opera they thought in- 
comparably the grandest musical utterances they had ever 
heard. Procter's tribute in verse to this 

" Queen and wonder of the enchanted world of sound " 

is one of his best lyrics, and never was singer more 
divinely complimented by poet. At the dinner I am 
describing he declared that she walked on the stage like 
an empress, " and when she sang," said he, " I held my 
breath." Leigh Hunt, in one of his letters to Procter in 
1831, says: "As to Pasta, I love her, for she makes the 
ground firm under my feet, and the sky blue over my 
head." 



384 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

I cannot remember all the good things I heard that 
day, but some of them live in my recollection still. Hunt 
quoted Hartley Coleridge, who said, "No boy ever im- 
agined himself a poet while he was reading Shakespeare 
or Milton." And speaking of Lander's oaths, he said, 
" They are so rich, they are really nutritious." Talking 
of criticism, he said he did not believe in spiteful imps, 
but in kindly elves who would " nod to him and do him 
courtesies." He laughed at Bishop Berkeley's attempt to 
destroy the world in one octavo volume. His doctrine to 
mankind always was, " Enlarge your tastes, that you may 
enlarge your hearts." He believed in reversing original 
propensities by education, — as Spallanzani brought up 
eagles on bread and milk, and fed doves on raw meat. 
" Don't let us demand too much of human nature," was a 
line in his creed ; and he believed in Hood's advice, that 
gentleness in a case of wrong direction is always better 
than vituperation. 

"Mid light, and by degrees, should be the plan 
To cure the dark and erring mind ; 
But who would rush at a benighted man 
And give him two black eyes for being blind ?" 

I recollect there was much converse that day on the 
love of reading in old age, and Leigh Hunt observed that 
Sir Robert Walpole, seeing Mr. Fox busy in the library 
at Houghton, said to him : " And you can read ! Ah, how 
I envy you ! I totally neglected the hahit of reading 
when I was young, and now in my old age I cannot read 
a single page." Hunt himself was a man who could be 
"penetrated by a book." It was inspiring to hear him 
dilate over " Plutarch's Morals," and quote passages from 
that delightful essay on "The Tranquillity of the Soul." 
He had such reverence for the wisdom folded up on 
his library shelves, he declared that the very perusal 
of the hacks of Ms looks was " a discipline of humanity." 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 385 

Whenever and wherever I met this charming person, I 
learned a lesson of gentleness and patience ; for, steeped 
to the lips in poverty as he was, he was ever the most 
cheerful, the most genial companion and friend. He 
never left his good-nature outside the family circle, as a 
Mussulman leaves his slippers outside a mosque, but he 
always brought a smiling face into the house with him. 

T A , whose fine floating wit has never yet quite 

condensed itself into a star, said one day of a Boston man 
that he was "east- wind made flesh." Leigh Hunt was 
exactly the opposite of this ; he was compact of all the 
spicy breezes that blow. In his bare cottage at Hammer- 
smith the temperament of his fine spirit heaped up such 
riches of fancy that kings, if wise ones, might envy his 
magic power. 

" Onward in faith, and leave the rest to Heaven," 

was a line he often quoted. There was about him such a 
modest fortitude in want and poverty, such an inborn 
mental superiority to low and uncomfortable circum- 
stances, that he rose without effort into a region encom- 
passed with felicities, untroubled by a care or sorrow. 
He always reminded me of that favorite child of the genii 
who carried an amulet in his bosom by which all the gold 
and jewels of the Sultan's halls were no sooner beheld 
than they became his own. If he sat down companion- 
less to a solitary chop, his imagination transformed it 
straightway into a fine shoulder of mutton. When he 
looked out of his dingy old windows on the four bleak 
elms in front of his dwelling, he saw, or thought he saw, 
a vast forest, and he could hear in the note of one poor 
sparrow even the silvery voices of a hundred nightingales. 
Such a man might often be cold and hungry, but he had 
the wit never to be aware of it. 

Hunt's love for Procter was deep and tender, and in 
17 X 



386 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

one of his notes to me he says, referring to the meeting 
my memory has been trying to describe, " I have reasons 
for liking our dear friend Procter's wine beyond what 
you saw when we dined together at his table the other 
day." Procter prefixed a memoir of the life and writings 
of Ben Jonson to the great dramatist's works printed by 
Moxon in 1838. I happen to be the lucky owner of a 
copy of this edition that once belonged to Leigh Hunt, 
who has enriched it and perfimied the pages, as it were, 
by his annotations. The memoir abounds in felicities of 
expression, and is the best brief chronicle yet made of 
rare Ben and his poetry. Leigh Hunt has fiUed the mar- 
gins with his own neat handwriting, and as I turn over 
the leaves, thus companioned, I seem to meet those two 
loving brothers in modern song, and have again the bene- 
fit of their sweet society, — a society redolent of 

" The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, 
And all the sweet serenity of books." 

I shall not soon forget the first morning I walked with 
Procter and Kenyon to the famous house No. 22 St. 
James Place, overlooking the Green Park, to a breakfast 
with Samuel Eogers. Mixed up with this matutinal rite 
was much that belongs to the modern literary and politi- 
cal history of England. Fox, Burke, Talleyrand, Grattan, 
Walter Scott, and many other great ones have sat there 
and held converse on divers matters with the banker- 
poet. For more than half a century the wits and the 
wise men honored that unpretending mansion with their 
presence. On my way thither for the first time my com- 
panions related anecdote after anecdote of the "ancient 
bard," as they called our host, telling me also how all his 
life long the poet of Memory had been giving substantial 
aid to poor authors ; how he had befriended Sheridan, and 
how good he had been to Campbell in his sorest needs. 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 387 

Intellectual or artistic excellence was a sure passport to 
his salon, and his door never turned on reluctant hinges 
to admit the unfriended man of letters who needed his 
aid and counsel. 

We arrived in quite an expectant mood, to find our 
host already seated at the head of his table, and his good 
man Edmund standing behind his chair. As we entered 
the room, and I saw Rogers sitting there so venerable and 
strange, I was reminded of that line of Wordsworth's, 

" The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray hair." 

But old as he was, he seemed full of verve, vivacity, and 
decision. Knowing his homage for Ben Franklin, I had 
brought to him as a gift from America an old volume 
issued by the patriot printer in 1741. He was delighted 
with my little present, and began at once to say how 
much he thought of Franklin's prose. He considered 
the style admirable, and declared that it might be studied 
now for improvement in the art of composition. One of 
the guests that morning was the Eev. Alexander Dyce, 
the scholarly editor of Beaumont and Fletcher, and he 
very soon drew Rogers out on the subject of Warren 
Hastings's trial. It seemed ghostly enough to hear that 
famous event depicted by one who sat in the great hall of 
William Rufus ; who day after day had looked on and lis-* 
tened to the eloquence of Fox and Sheridan ; who had 
heard Edmund Burke raise his voice till the old arches of 
Irish oak resounded, and impeach Warren Hastings, " in 
the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, in the 
name of every rank, as the common enemy and oppressor 
of all." It thrilled me to hear Rogers say, " As I walked 
up Parliament Street with Mrs. Siddons, after hearing 
Sheridan's great speech, we both agreed that never before 
could human lips have uttered more eloquent words." 
That morning Rogers described to us the appearance of 



388 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

Grattan as lie first saw and heard him when he made his 
first speech in Parliament. " Some of us were inclined to 
laugh," said he, "at the orator's Irish brogue when he 
began his speech that day, but after he had been on his 
legs five minutes nobody dared to laugh any more." 
Then followed personal anecdotes of Madame De Stael, 
the Duke of Wellington, Walter Scott, Tom Moore, and 
Sydney Smith, all exquisitely told. Both our host and 
his friend Procter had known or entertained most of the 
celebrities of their day. Procter soon led the conversa- 
tion up to matters connected with the stage, and thinking 
of John Kemble and Edmund Kean, I ventured to ask 
Rogers who of all the great actors he had seen bore away 
the palm. " I have looked upon a magnificent procession 
of them," he said, " in my time, and I never saw any one 
superior to David Garrick" He then repeated Hannah 
More's couplet on receiving as a gift from Mrs. Garrick 
the shoe-buckles which once belonged to the great 
actor : — 

"Thy buckles, Garrick, another may use. 
But none shall be found who can tread in thy shoes." 

We applauded his memory and his manner of reciting 
the lines, which seemed to please him. " How much can 
sometimes be put into an epigram ! " he said to Procter, 
and asked him if he remembered the lines about Earl 
Grey and the Kaf&r war. Procter did not recall them, 
and Eogers set off again : — 

" A dispute has arisen of late at the Cape, 
As touching the devil, his color and shape ; 
While some folks contend that the devil is white. 
The others aver that he 's black as midnight ; 
But now 't is decided quite right in this way, 
And all are convinced that the devil is Grey." 

We asked him if he remembered the theatrical excite- 
ment in London when Garrick and his troublesome con» 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 389 

temporary, Barry, were playing King Lear at rival houses, 
and dividing the final opinion of the critics. " Yes," said 
he, " perfectly, I saw both those wonderful actors, and 
fully agreed at the time with the admirable epigram that 
ran like wildfire into every nook and corner of society." 
" Did the epigram still live in his memory ? " we asked. 
The old man seemed looking across the misty valley of 
time for a few moments, and then gave it without a 
pause : — 

"The town have chosen different ways 
To praise their different Lears ; 
To Barry they give loud applause, 
To Garrick only tears. 

"A king ! ay, every inch a king, 
Such Barry doth appear ; 
Bnt Garrick 's quite another thing, — 
He 's every inch King Lear /" 

Among other things which Eogers told us that morning, 
I remember he had much to say of Byron's forgetfulncss 
as to all manner of things. As an evidence of his inac- 
curacy, Eogers related how the noble bard had once 
quoted to him some lines on Venice as Southey's, " which 
he wanted me to admire," said Eogers ; " and as I wrote 
them myself, I had no hesitation in doing so. The lines 
are in my poem on Italy, and begin, 

" 'There is a glorious city in the sea.' " 

Samuel Lawrence had recently painted in oils a portrait 
of Eogers, and we asked to see it ; so Edmund was sent 
up stairs to get it, and bring it to the table. Eogers him- 
self wished to compare it with his own face, and had a 
looking-glass held before him. We sat by in silence as 
he regarded the picture attentively, and waited for his 
criticism. Soon he burst out with, " Is my nose so 

d y sharp as that ? " We all exclaimed, " No ! no ! 

the artist is at fault there, sir." " I thought so," he cried ; 



39° YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

"he has painted the face of a dead man, d — n him!" 
Some one said, " The portrait is too hard." " I won't be 
painted as a hard man," rejoined Eogers. " I am not a 
hard man, am I, Procter ? " asked the old poet. Procter 
deprecated with energy such an idea as that. Looking at 
the portrait again, Eogers said, with great feeling, " Chil- 
dren would run away from that face, and they never ran 
away from me ! " Notwithstanding all he had to say 
against the portrait, I thought it a wonderful likeness, and 
a painting of great value. Moxon, the publisher, who 
was present, asked for a certain portfolio of engraved 
heads which had been made from time to time of Eogers, 
and this was brought and opened for our examination of 
its contents. Eogers insisted upon looking over the por- 
traits, and he amused us by his cutting comments on each 
one as it came out of the portfolio. " This," said he, 
holding one up, " is the head of a cunning fellow, and this 
the face of a debauched clergyman, and this the visage of 
a shameless drunkard ! " After a comic discussion of the 
pictures of himself, which went on for half an hour, he 
said, " It is time to change the topic, and set aside the lit- 
tle man for a very great one. Bring me my collection of 
Washington portraits." These were brought in, and he 
had much to say of American matters. He remembered 
being told, when a boy, by his father one day, that " a fight 
had recently occurred at a place called Bunker Hill, in 
America." He then inquired about Webster and the 
monument. He had met Webster in England, and 
greatly admired him. Now and then his memory was at 
fault, and he spoke occasionally of events as still existing 
which had happened half a century before. I remember 
what a shock it gave me when he asked me if Alexander 
Hamilton had printed any new pamphlets lately, and 
begged me to send him anything that distinguished man 
might publish after I got home to America. 






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''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 391 

I recollect how delighted I was when Eogers sent me 
an invitation the second time to breakfast with him. On 
that occasion the poet spoke of being in Paris on a pleas- 
ure-tour with Daniel Webster, and he gi-ew eloquent over 
the great American orator's genius. He also referred 
with enthusiasm to Bryant's poetry, and quoted with 
deep feeling the first three verses of " The Future Life." 
When he pronounced the lines : — 

" My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, 
And must thou never utter it iu heaven ? " 

his voice trembled, and he faltered out, " I cannot go on : 
there is something in that poem which breaks me down, 
and I must never try again to recite verses so full of ten- 
derness and undying love." 

For Longfellow's poems, then just published in Eng- 
land, he expressed the warmest admiration, and thought 
the author of " Voices of the Night " one of the most 
perfect artists in English verse who had ever lived. 

Eogers's reminiscences of Holland House that morning 
were a series of delightful pictures painted by an artist 
who left out none of the salient features, but gave to 
everything he touched a graphic reality. In his narra- 
tions the eloquent men, the fine ladies, he had seen there 
assembled again around their noble host and hostess, and 
one listened in the pleasant breakfast-room in St. James 
Place to the wit and wisdom of that brilliant company 
which met fifty years ago in the great salon of that 
princely mansion, which will always be famous in the 
literary and political history of England. 

Eogers talked that morning with inimitable finish and 
grace of expression. A light seemed to play over his 
faded features when he recalled some happy past experi- 
ence, and his eye would sometimes fill as he glanced back 
among his kindred, all now dead save one, his sister, who 



392 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

also lived to a great age. His head was very fine, and I 
never could quite understand the satirical sayings about 
his personal appearance which have crept into the literary 
gossip of his time. He was by no means the vivacious 
spectre some of his contemporaries have represented him, 
and I never thought of connecting him with that terrible 
line in " The Mirror of Magistrates," — 

" His withered fist still strikiug at Death's door." 

His dome of brain was one of the amplest and most per- 
fectly shaped I ever saw, and his countenance M^as very 
far from unpleasant. His faculties to enjoy had not per- 
ished with age. He certainly looked like a well-seasoned 
author, but not dropping to pieces yet. His turn of 
thought was characteristic, and in the main just, for he 
loved the best, and was naturally impatient of what was 
low and mean in conduct and intellect. He had always 
lived in an atmosphere of art, and his reminiscences of 
painters and sculptors were never wearisome or dull. He 
had a store of pleasant anecdotes of Chantrey, whom he 
had employed as a wood-carver long before he became a 
modeller in clay ; and he had also much to tell us of Sir 
Joshua Eeynolds, whose lectures he had attended, and 
whose studio-talk had been familiar to him while he was 
a young man and studying art himself as an amateur. It 
was impossible almost to make Eogers seem a real being 
as we used to surround his table during those mornings 
and sometimes deep into the afternoons. We were listen- 
ing to one who had talked with Bos well about Dr. John- 
son ; who had sat hours with Mrs. Piozzi ; who read the 
"Vicar of Wakefield" the day it was published; who 
had heard Haydn, the composer, playing at a concert, 
" dressed out with a sword " ; who had listened to Talley- 
rand's best sayings from his own lips ; who had seen 
John Wesley lying dead in his coffin, " an old man, with 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 393 

the countenance of a little child " ; who had been with 
Beckford at Fonthill; who had seen Porson slink back 
into the dining-room after the company had left it and 
drain what was left in the wineglasses ; who had crossed 
the Apennines with Byron ; who had seen Beau Nash in 
the height of his career dancing minuets at Bath ; who 
had known Lady Hamilton in her days of beauty, and 
seen her often with Lord Nelson ; who was in Fox's room 
when that great man lay dying ; and who could describe 
Pitt from personal observation, speaking always as if his 
mouth was " full of worsted." It was unreal as a dream 
to sit there in St. James Place and hear that old man 
talk by the hour of what one had been reading about all 
one's life. One thing, I must confess, somewhat shocked 
me, — I was not prepared for the feeble manner in which 
some of Eogers's best stories were received by the gentle- 
men who had gathered at his table on those Tuesday 
mornings. But when Procter told me in explanation after- 
ward that they had all " heard the same anecdotes every 
week, perhaps, for half a century from the same lips," I 
no longer wondered at the seeming apathy I had wit- 
nessed. It was a great treat to me, however, the talk I 
heard at Eogers's hospitable table, and my three visits 
there cannot be erased from the pleasantest tablets of 
memory. There is only one regret connected with them, 
but that loss still haunts me. On one of those memora- 
ble mornings I was obliged to leave earlier than the rest 
of the company on account of an engagement out of 
London, and Lady Beecher (formerly Miss O'Neil), the 
great actress of other days, came in and read an hour to 
the old poet and his guests. Procter told me afterward 
that among other things she read, at Eogers's request, the 
14th chapter of Isaiah, and that her voice and manner 
seemed like inspiration. 

Seeing and talking with Eogers was, indeed, like living 
17* 



394 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

in the past : and one may imagine how weird it seemed 
to a raw Yankee youth, thus facing the man who might 
have shaken hands with Dr. Johnson. I ventured to ask 
him one day if he had ever seen the doctor. " No," said 
he ; " but I went down to Bolt Court in 1782 with the 
intention of making Dr. Johnson's acquaintance. I 
raised the knocker tremblingly, and hearing the shuffling 
footsteps as of an old man in the entry, my heart failed 
me, and I put down the knocker softly again, and crept 
back into Fleet Street without seeing the vision I was not 
bold enough to encounter." I thought it was something 
to have heard the footsteps of old Sam Johnson stirring 
about in that ancient entry, and for my own part I was 
glad to look upon the man whose ears had been so 
strangely privileged. 

Eogers drew about him all the musical as well as the 
literary talent of London. Grisi and Jenny Lind often 
came of a morning to sing their best arias to him when 
he became too old to attend the opera ; and both Adelaide 
and Fanny Kemble brought to him frequently the rich 
tributes of their genius in art. 

It was my good fortune, through the friendship of 
Procter, to make the acquaintance, at Rogers's table, of 
Leslie, the artist, — a warm friend of the old poet, — 
and to be taken round by him and shown all the prin- 
cipal private galleries in London. He first drew my 
attention to the pictures by Constable, and pointed out 
their quiet beauty to my uneducated eye, thus instruct- 
ing me to hate all those intemperate landscapes and lurid 
compositions which abound in the shambles of modern 
art. In the company of Leslie I saw my first Titians 
and Vandycks, and felt, as ISTorthcote says, on my good 
behavior in the presence of portraits so lifelike and in- 
spiring. It was Leslie who inoculated me with a love of 
Gainsborough, before whose perfect pictures a spectator 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 395 

involuntarily raises his hat and stands uncovered. (And 
just here let me advise every art lover who goes to Eng- 
land to visit the little Dulwich Gallery, only a few miles 
from London, and there to spend an hour or two among 
the exquisite Gainsborouglis. No small collection in 
Europe is better worth a visit, and the place itself in 
summer-time is enchanting with greenery.) 

As Eogers's dining-room abounded in only first-rate 
works of art, Leslie used to take round the guests and 
make us admire the Eaphaels and Correggios. Inserted 
in the walls on each side of the mantel-piece, like tiles, 
were several of Turner's original oil and water-color draw- 
ings, which that supreme artist had designed to illustrate 
Eogers's "Poems" and "Italy." Long before Euskin made 
those sketches world-famous in his " Modern Painters," I 
have heard Leslie point out their beauties with as fine an 
enthusiasm. He used to say that they purified the whole 
atmosphere round St. James Place ! 

Procter had a genuine regard for Count d'Orsay, and he 
pointed him out to me one day sitting in the window of 
his club, near Gore House, looking out on Piccadilly, 
The count seemed a little past his prime, but was still 
the handsomest man in London. Procter described him 
as a brilliant person, of special ability, and by no means 
a mere dandy. 

I first saw Procter's friend, John Forster, the biogra- 
pher of Goldsmith and Dickens, in his pleasant rooms. 
No. 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields. He was then in his prime, 
and looked brimful of energy. His age might have been 
forty, or a trifle onward from that mile-stone, and his 
whole manner announced a determination to assert that 
nobody need prompt him. His voice rang loud and clear, 
up stairs and down, everywhere throughout his premises. 
"When he walked over the uncarpeted floor, you Jieard him 
walk, and he meant you should. When he spoke, nobody 



396 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

required an ear-trmnpet ; the deaf never lost a syllable of 
his manly utterances. Procter and he were in the same 
Commission, and were on excellent terms, the younger 
officer always regarding the elder with a kind of leonine 
deference. » 

It was to John Forster these charming lines were ad- 
dressed by Barry Cornwall, when the poet sent his old 
friend a present of Shakespeare's Works. A more exqui- 
site compliment was never conveyed in verse so modest 
and so perfect in simple grace : — 

"I do not know a man who better reads 
Or weighs the great thoughts of the book I send, — 
Better than he whom I have called my friend 
For twenty years and upwards. He who feeds 
Upon Shakesperian pastures never needs 
The humbler food which springs from plains below ; 
Yet may he love the little flowers that blow, 
And him excuse who for their beauty pleads. 

"Take then my Shakespeare to some sylvan nook ; 
And pray thee, in the name of Days of old, 
Good-will and friendship, never bought or sold, 
Give me assurance thou wilt always look 
With kindness still on Spirits of humbler mould ; 
Kept firm by resting on that wondrous book. 
Wherein the Dream of Life is all unrolled. " 

Forster's library was filled with treasures, and he 
brought to the dinner-table, the day I was first with 
him, such rare and costly manuscripts and annotated 
volumes to show us, that one's appetite for "made dishes" 
was quite taken away. The excellent lady whom he 
afterward married was one of the guests, and among the 
gentlemen present I remember the brilliant author of 
"The Bachelor of the Albany," a book that was then the 
Novel sensation in London. Forster flew from one topic 
to another with admirable skiU, and entertained us with 
anecdotes of Wellington and Kogers, gilding the time with 




/^^ A^/2^ 



fi 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 397 

capital imitations of his celebrated contemporaries in lit- 
erature and on the stage. A touch about Edmund Kean 
made us all start from our chairs and demand a mimetic 
repetition. Forster must have been an excellent private 
actor, for he had power and skill quite exceptional in that 
way. His force carried him along wherever he chose to 
go, and when he played " Kitely," his ability must have 
been strikingly apparent. After his marriage, and when 
he removed from Lincoln's Inn to his fine residence at 
" Palace-Gate House," he gave frequent readings, evincing 
remarkable natural and acquired talents. For Dickens 
he had a love amounting to jealousy. He never quite 
relished anybody else whom the great noveHst had a 
fondness for, and I have heard droll stories touching this 
weakness. For Professor Felton he had unbounded re- 
gard, which had grown up by correspondence and through 
report from Dickens. He had never met Felton, and 
when the professor arrived in London, Dickens, with his 
love of fun, arranged a bit of cajolery, which was never 
quite forgotten, though wholly forgiven. Knowing how 
highly Forster esteemed Felton, through his writings and 
his letters, Dickens resolved to take Felton at once to 
Forster's house and introduce him as Professor Stowe, the 
port of both these gentlemen being pretty nearly equal. 
The Stowes were then in England on tlieir triumphant 
tour, and this made the attempt at deception an easy one. 
So, Felton being in the secret, he and Dickens proceed to 
Forster's house and are shown in. Down comes Forster 
into tlie library, and is presented forthwith to " Pro- 
fessor Stotve." " Uncle Tom's Cabin " is at once referred 
to, and the talk goes on in that direction for some time. 
At last both Dickens and Felton fell into such a parox- 
ysm of laughter at Forster's dogged determination to be 
complimentary to the world-renowned novel, that they 
could no longer hold out; and Forster, becoming almost 



398 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

insane with wonder at the hilarious conduct of his two 
visitors, Dickens revealed their wickedness, and a right 
jolly day the happy trio made of it. 

Talfourd informs us that Forster had become to Charles 
Lamb as one of his oldest companions, and that Mary 
also cherished a strong regard for him. It is surely a 
proof of his admirable qualities that the love of so many 
of England's best and greatest was secured to him by so 
lasting a tenure. To have the friendship of Landor, 
Dickens, and Procter through long years ; to have Carlyle 
for a constant votary, and to be mourned by him with an 
abiding sorrow, — these are no slight tributes to purity 
of purpose. 

Forster had that genuine sympathy with men of letters 
which entitled him to be their biographer, and all his 
works in that department have a special charm, habitu- 
ally gained only by a subtle and earnest intellect. 

It is a singular coincidence that the writers of two of 
the most brilliant records of travel of their time should 
have been law students in Barry Cornwall's office. King- 
lake, the author of " Eothen," and Warburton, the author 
of " The Crescent and the Cross," were at one period both 
engaged as pupils in their profession under the guidance 
of Mr. Procter. He frequently spoke with pride of his 
two law students, and when Warburton perished at sea, 
his grief for his brilliant friend was deep and abiding. 
Kinglake's later literary fame was always a pleasure to 
the historian's old master, and no one in England loved 
better to point out the fine passages in the " History of 
the Invasion of the Crimea " than the old poet in Wey- 
mouth Street. 

"Blackwood" and the "Quarterly Review" railed at 
Procter and his author friends for a long period ; but how 
true is the saying of Macaulay, " that the place of books 
in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 399 

alout them, but by what is written in them ! " No man 
was more decried in his day than Procter's friend, Wil- 
liam Hazlitt. The poet had for the critic a genuine ad- 
miration; and I have heard him dilate with a kind of 
rapture over the critic's fine sayings, quoting abundant 
passages from the essays. Procter would never hear any 
disparagement of his friend's ability and keenness. I re- 
call his earnest but restrained indignation one day, when 
some person compared Hazlitt with a diffusive mod- 
ern writer of notes on the theatre, and I remember with 
what contempt, in his sweet forgivable way, the old man 
spoke of much that passes nowadays for criticism. He 
said Hazlitt was exactly the opposite of Lord Chesterfield, 
who advised his son, if he could not get at a thing in a 
straight line, to try the serpentine one. There were no 
crooked pathways in Hazhtt's intellect. His style is brill- 
iant, but never cloyed with ornamentation. Hazlitt's 
paper on Gifford was thought by Procter to be as pungent 
a bit of writing as had appeared in his day, and he quoted 
this paragraph as a sample of its biting justice : " Mr- 
Gifford is admirably qualified for the situation he has 
held for many years as editor of the ' Quarterly ' by a 
happy combination of defects, natural and acquired." In 
one of his letters to me Procter writes, " I despair of the 
age that has forgotten to read Hazlitt." 

Procter was a delightful prose writer, as well as a 
charming poet. Having met in old magazines and an- 
nuals several of his essays and stories, and admiring their 
style and spirit, I induced him, after much persuasion, to 
collect and publish in America his prose works. The 
result was a couple of volumes, which were brought out 
in Boston in 1853. In them there are perhaps no 
" thoughts that wander through eternity," but they abound 
in fancies which the reader will recognize as agile 

" Daughters of the earth and sun." 



400 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

In them there is nothing loud or painful, and whoever 
really loves " a good book," and knows it to be such on 
trial, will find Barry Cornwall's "Essays and Tales in 
Prose " most delectable reading. " Imparadised," as Mil- 
ton hath the word, on a summer hillside, or tented by the 
cool salt wave, no better afternoon literature can be se- 
lected. One will never meet with distorted metaphor or 
tawdry rhetoric in Barry's thoughtful pages, but will find 
a calm philosophy and a beautiful faith, very precious 
and profitable in these days of doubt and insecurity of 
intellect. There is a respite and a sympathy in this fine 
spirit, and so I commend him heartily in times so full of 
turmoil and suspicion as these. One of the stories in the 
first volume of these prose writings, called "The Man- 
Hunter," is quite equal in power to any of the grapliic 
pieces of a similar character ever written by De Quincey 
or Dickens, but the tone in these books is commonly 
more tender and inclining to melancholy. What, for in- 
stance, could be more heart-moving than these passages 
of his on the death of little children ? 

" I scarcely know how it is, but the deaths of children seem to 
me always less premature than those of elder persons. Not that 
they are in fact so ; but it is because they themselves have little or 
no relation to time or maturity. Life seems a race which they have 
yet to run entirely. They have made no progress toward the goal. 
They are born — nothing further. But it seems hard, when a man 
has toiled high up the steep hill of knowledge, that he should be 
cast like Sisyphus, downward in a moment ; that he who has worn 
the day and wasted the night in gathering the gold of science should 
be, with all his wealth of learning, all his accumulations, made 
bankrupt at once. What becomes of all the riches of the soul, the 
piles and pyramids of precious thoughts which men heap together 1 
Where are Shakespeare's imagination, Bacon's learning, Galileo's 
dream ? Where is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of 
Fletcher, and Milton's thought severe ? Methinks such things should 
not die and dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick 
of Egypt will last three thousand years ! I am content to beUeve 
that the mind of man survives (somewhere or other) his clay. 



"BARRT CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 401 

" I was once present at the death of a little child. I will not pain 
the reader by portraying its agonies ; but when its breath was gone, 
its life, (nothing more than a cloud of smoke !) and it lay like a waxen 
image before me, I turned my eyes to its moaning mother, and sighed 
out my few words of comfort. But I am a beggar in grief. I can 
feel and sigh and look kindly, I think ; but I have nothing to give. 
My tongue deserts me. I know the inutility of too soon comforting. 
I know that I should weep were I the loser, and I let the tears have 
their way. Sometimes a word or two I can muster : a * Sigh no 
more ! ' and ' Dear lady, do not grieve ! ' but further I am mute and 
useless." 

I have many letters and kind little notes whicli Procter 
used to write me duiing the years I knew him best. His 
tricksy fancies peeped out in his correspondence, and sev- 
eral of his old friends in England thought no literary man 
of his time had a better epistolary style. His neat ele- 
gant chirography on the back of a letter was always a 
delightful foretaste of something good inside, and I never 
received one of his welcome missives that did not contain, 
no matter how brief it happened to be, welcome passages 
of wit or affectionate interest. 

In one of his early letters to me he says : — 

" There is no one rising hereabouts in literature. I suppose our 
national genius is taking a mechanical turn. And, in truth, it is 
much better to make a good steam-engine than to manufacture a bad 
poem. ' Building the lofty rhyme ' is a good thing, but our present 
buildings are of a low order, and seldom reach the Attic. Thia 
piece of wit will scarcely throw you into a fit, I imagiae, your risible 
muscles being doubtless kept in good order." 

In another he writes : — 

" I see you have some capital names in the ' Atlantic Monthly.' 
If they will only put forth their strength, there is no doubt as to 
the result, but the misfortune is that persons who write anony- 
mously don't put forth their strength, in general. I was a magazine 
writer for no less than a dozen years, and I felt that no personal 
credit or responsibility attached to my literary trifling, and although 
I sometimes did pretty well (for me), yet I never did my best." 

z 



402 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

As I read over again the portfolio of his letters to me, 
bearing date from 1848 to 1866, I find many passages of 
interest, but most of them are too personal for type. A 
few extracts, however, I cannot resist copying. Some of 
his epistles are enriched with a song or a sonnet, then 
just written, and there are also frequent references in 
them to American editions of his poetical and prose works, 
which he collected at the request of his Boston publishers. 

In June, 1851, he writes : — 

" I have encountered a good many of your countrymen here lately, 
but have been introduced only to a few. I found Mr. Norton, who 
has returned to you, and Mr. Dwight, who is still here, I believe, 
very intelligent and agreeable. 

" If all Americans were like them and yourself, and if all English- 
men were like Kenyon and (so far as regards a desire to judge fairly) 
myself, I think there would be little or no quarrelling between our 
small island and your great continent. 

" Our glass palace is a perpetual theme for small-talk. It usurps 
the place of the weather, which is turned adrift, or laid up in ordi- 
nary for future use. Nevertheless it (I mean the palace) is a re- 
markable achievement, after all ; and I speak sincerely when I say, 
' All honor and glory to Paxton ! ' If the strings of my poor little 
lyre were not rusty and overworn, I think I should try to sing some 
of my nonsense verses before his image, and add to the idolatry al- 
ready existing. 

" If you have hotter weather in America than that which is at 
present bixrning and blistering us here, you are entitled to pity. If 
it continue much longer, I shall be held in solution for the remain- 
der of my days, and shall be remarkable as ' Oxygen, the poet ' (re- 
duced to his natural weakness and simplicity by the hot smnmer of 
1851), instead of Your very sincere and obliged 

" B. W. Procter." 

Here is a brief reference to Judd's remarkable novel, 
forming part of a note written to me in 1852 : — 

"Thanks for 'Margaret' (the book, not the woman), that you 
have sent me. When will you want it back ? and who is the au- 
thor? There is a great deal of clever writing in it, — great observa- 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 403 

tion of nature, and also of character among a certain class of persons. 
But it is almost too minute, and for me decidedly too theological. 
You see what irreligious people we are here. I shall come over to 
one of your camp-meetings and try to be converted. What will 
they administer in such a case ? brimstone or brandy ? I shall try 
the latter first." 

Here is a letter bearing date " Thursday night, Novem- 
ber 25, 1852," in which he refers to his own writings, and 
copies a charming song : — 

" Your letter, announcing the arrival of the little preface, reached 
me last night. I shall look out for the book in about three weeks 
hence, as you teU me that they are all printed. You Americans 
are a rapid race. When I thought you were in Scotland, lo, you 
had touched the soil of Boston ; and when I thought you were un- 
packing my poor MS., tumbling it out of your great trunk, behold ! 
it is arranged — it is in the printer's hands — it is printed — pub- 
lished — it is — ah ! would I could add, SOLD ! That, after all, is 
the grand triumph in Boston as well as London. 

" Well, since it is not sold yet, let us be generous and give a few 
copies away. Indeed, such is my weakness, that I would sometimes 
rather give than sell. In the present instance you will do me the 
kindness to send a copy each to Mr. Charles Sumner, Mr. Hillard, 
Mr. Norton : but no — my wife requests to be the donor to Mr. 
Norton, so you must, if you please, write his name in the first leaf 
and state that it comes from ' Mrs. Procter.' I liked him very much 
when I met him in London, and I should wish him to be reminded 
of his English acquaintance. 

" I am writing to you at eleven o'clock at night, after a long and 
busy day, and I write now rather than wait for a little inspiration, 
because the mail, I believe, starts to-morrow. The unwilling Mi- 
nerva is at my elbow, and I feel that every sentence I write, were 
it pounded ten times in a mortar, would come out again unleavened 
and heavy. Braying some people in a mortar, you know, is but 
a weary and unprofitable process. 

" You speak of London as a delightful place. I don't know how 
it may be in the white-bait season, but at present it is foggy, rainy, 
cold, dull. Half of us are unwell and the other half dissatisfied. 
Some are apprehensive of an invasion, — not an impossible event ; 
some writing odes to the Duke of Wellington ; and I am putting 
my good friend to sleep with the flattest prose that ever dropped 



404 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

from an English pen. I wish that it were better ; I wish that it 
were even worse ; but it is the most undeniable twaddle. I must 
go to bed, and invoke the Muses in the morning. At present, I can- 
not touch one of their petticoats. 

"A SLEEPY SONG. 
" Sing ! sing me to sleep ! 

With gentle words, in some sweet slumberous measure. 
Such as lone poet on some shady steep 
Sings to the silence in his noonday leisure. 

"Sing ! as the river sings, 

When gently it flows between soft banks of flowers. 
And the bee murmurs, and the cuckoo brings 
His faint May music, 'tween the golden showers. 

" Sing ! divinest tone ! 

I sink beneath some wizard's charming wand ; 
I yield, 1 move, by soothing breezes blown, 
O'er twihght shores, into the Dreaming Land ! 

" I read the above to you when you were in London. It will ap- 
pear in an Annual edited by Miss Power (Lady Blessington's niece). 

" Friday Morning. 

" The wind blowing down the chimney ; the rain sprinkling my 
windows. The English Apollo hides his head — you can scarcely 
see him on the ' misty mountain-tops ' (those brick ones which you 
remember in Portland Place). 

" My friend Thackeray is gone to America, and I hope is, by this 
time, iu the United States. He goes to New York, and afterward 
I suppose (but I don't know) to Boston and Philadelphia. Have you 
seen Esmond ? There are parts of it charmingly written. His pa- 
thos is to me very touching. I believe that the best mode of making 
one's way to a person's head is — through his heart. 

" I hope that your literary men will like some of my little prose 
matters. I know that they will try to like them ; but the papers 
have been written so long, and all, or almost all, written so hastily, 
that I have my misgivings. However, they must take their chance. 

" Had I leisure to complete something that I began two or three 
years ago, and in which I have written a chapter or two, I should 
reckon more surely on success ; but I shall probably never finish 
the thing, although I contemplated only one volume. 

" (If you cannot read this letter apply to the printer's devil. — 
Hibernicus.) 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 405 

" Farewell. All good he witli you- My wife desires to be kindly 
remembered by you. 

" Always yours, very sincerely, 

" B. W. Procter." 

" P. S. — Can you contrive to send Mr. Willis a copy of the prose 
book 1 If so, pray do." 

In February, 1853, he writes : — 

" Those famous volumes, the advent of which was some time since 
announced by the great transatlantic trumpet, have duly arrived. 
My wife is properly grateful for her copy, which, indeed, impresses 
both of us with respect for the American skill in binding. Neither 
too gay to be gaudy, nor too grave, so as to affect the theological, it 
hits that happy medium which agrees with the tastes of most people 
and disgusts none. We should flatter ourselves that it is intended 
to represent the matter within, but that we are afraid of incurring 
the sin of vanity, and the indiscretion of taking appearances too 
much upon trust. We suspend our conjectures on this verj'' inter- 
esting subject. The whole getting up of the book is excellent. 

" For the little scraps of (critical) sugar enclosed in your letter, 
due thanks. These will sweeten our imagination for some time to 
come. 

" I have been obliged to give all the copies you sent me away. I 
dare say you will not grudge me four or five copies more, to be sent 
at your convenience, of course. Let me hear from you at the same 
time. You can give me one of those frequent quarters of an hour 
which I know you now devote to a meditation on ' things in general.' 

" T am glad that you like Thackeray. He is well worth your 
liking. I trust to his making both friends and money in America, 
and to his keeping both. I am not so sure of the money, however, 
for he has a liberal hand. I should have liked to have been at one 
of the dinners you speak of. When shall you begin that bridge ? 
You seem to be a long time about it. It will, I dare say, be a bridge 
of boats, after all 

" I was reading (rather re-reading) the other evening the introduc- 
tory chapter to the ' Scarlet Letter.' It is admirably written. Not 
having any great sympathy with a custom-house, — nor, indeed, 
with Salem, except that it seems to be Hawthorne's birthplace, — all 
my attention was concentrated on the style, which seems to me 
excellent 



4o6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

" The most striking book which has been recently published here 
is * Villette/ by the authoress of ' Jane Eyre,' who, as you know, ia 
a Miss Bronte. The book does not give one the most pleasing no- 
tion of the authoress, perhaps, but it is very clever, graphic, vigor- 
ous. It is ' man's meat,' and not the whipped syllabub, which is all 
froth, without any jam at the bottom. The scene of the drama is 
Brussels. 

" I was sorry to hear of poor Willis. Our critics here were too 
severe upon him 

" The Frost King (vulg. Jack Frost) has come down, upon us with 
all his might. Banished from the pleasant shores of Boston, he has 
come with his cold scythe and ice pincers to our undefended little 
island, and is tyrannizing in every corner and over every part of every 
person. Nothing is too great for him, nothing too mean. He con- 
descends even to lay hold of the nose (an offence for which any one 
below the dignity of a King — or a President — would be kicked.) 
As for me I have taken refuge in 

"A SONG WITH A MORAL. 

" When the winter bloweth loud. 
And the earth is in a shroud. 
Frozen rain or sleety snow 
Dimming every dream below, — 
There is e'er a spot of green 
Whence the heavens may be seen. 

" When our purse is shrinking fast, 
And our friend is lost, (the last !) 
And the world doth pour its pain, 
Sharper than the frozen rain, — 

There is still a spot of green 

Whence the heavens may be seen. 

" Let us never meet despair 
While the little spot is there ; 
Winter brighteneth into May, 
And sullen night to sunny day, — 
Seek we then the spot of green 
Whence the heavens may be seen. 

" I have left myself little space for more small-talk. I must, 
therefore, conclude with wishing that your English dreams may con- 
tinue bright, and that when they begin to fade you will come and 



<'BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 407 

relume at one of the white-bait dinners of which you used to talk in 
such terms of rapture, 

"Have I space to say that I am very truly yours 1 

" B. W. Procteb. 

A few months later, in the same year (1853), he sits by 
his open window in London, on a morning of spring, and 
sends oif the following pleasant words : — 

" You also must now be in the first burst and sunshine of spring. 
Your spear-grass is showing its points, your succulent grass its rich- 
ness, even your little plant [ ? ] (so useful for certain invalids) is 
seen here and there ; primroses are peeping out in your neighbor- 
hood, and you are looking for cowslips to come. I say nothing of 
your hawthorns (from the common May to the classic Nathaniel), 
except that I trust they are thri\'ing, and like to put forth a world 
of blossoms soon. 

' With all this wealth, present and future, 
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose,' 

you will doubtless feel disposed to scatter your small coins abroad 
on the poor, and, among other things, to forward to your humble 

correspondent those copies of B C 's prose works which you 

promised I know not how long ago. ' He who gives speedily' they 
say, ' gives twice.' I quote, as you see, from the Latins. 

" I have just got the two additional volumes of De Quincey, for 
which — thanks ! I have not seen Mr. Parker, who brought them, 
and who left his card here yesterday, but I have asked if he will 
come and breakfast with me on Sunday, — my only certain leisure 
day. Your De Quincey is a man of a good deal of reading, and has 
thought on divers and sundry matters ; but he is evidently so thor- 
oughly well pleased with the Sieur ' Thomas De Quincey ' that his self- 
suflBciency spoils even his best works. Then some of his facts are, I 
hear, quasi facts only, not unfrequently. He has his moments when 
he sleeps, and becomes oblivious of all but the aforesaid ' Thomas,' 
who pervades both his sleeping and waking visions. I, like all 
authors, am glad to have a little praise now and then (it is my hy- 
dromel), but it must be dispensed by others. I do not think it 
decent to manufacture the sweet liquor myself, and I hate a cox- 
comb, whether in dress or print. 

" We have little or no literary news here. Our poets are all going 



4o8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

to the poorhouse (except Tennyson), and our prose writers are piling 
up their works for the next 5th of November, when there will be a 
great bonfire. It is deuced lucky that my immortal (ah ! I am De 
Quinceying) — I mean my humble — performances were printed in 
America, so that they will escape. By the by, are they on foolscap 1 
for I forgot to caution you on that head. 

" I have been spending a week at Liverpool, where I rejoiced to 
hear that Hawthorne's appointment was settled, and that it was a 
valuable post ; but I hear that it lasts for three years only. This is 
melancholy. I hope, however, that he will ' realize ' (as you trans- 
atlantics say) as much as he can during his consulate, and that your 
next President will have the good taste and the good sense to renew 
his lease for three years more. 

" I have not seen Mrs. Stowe, I shall probably meet her some- 
where or other when she comes to London. 

" I dare not ask after Mr. Longfellow. He was kind enough to 
write me a very agreeable letter some time ago, which I ought to 
have answered. I dare say he has forgotten it, but my conscience is 
a serpent that gives me a bite or a sting every now and then when 
I think of him. The first time I am in fit condition (I mean in 
point of brightness) to reply to so famous a correspondent, I shall 
try what an English pen and ink will enable me to say. In the 
mean time, God be thanked for all things ! 

" My wife heard from Thackeray about ten days ago. He speaks 
gratefully of the kindness that he has met with m America. Among 
other things, it appears that he has seen something of your slaves, 
whom he represents as leading a very easy life, and as being fat, cheer- 
ful, and happy. Nevertheless, / (for one) would rather be a free 
man, — such is the singularity of my opinions. If my prosings 
should ever in the course of the next twenty years require to be re- 
printed, pray take note of the above opinion. 

" And now I have no more paper ; I have scarcely room left to 
say that I hope you are well, and to remind you that for your ten 
lines of writing I have sent you back a hundred. Give my best 
compliments to all whom I know, personally or otherwise. God be 
with you I 

" Yours, very sincerely, 

"B.W.Procter." 

Procter always seemed to be astounded at the travelling 
spirit of Americans, and in his letters he makes frequent 
reference to our " national propensity," as he calls it. 



"BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 409 

" Half an hour ago," he writes in July, 1853, " we had three of 
your countrymen here to lunch, — countrymen I mean, Hiberni- 
cally, for two of them wore petticoats. They are all going to Swit- 
zerland, France, Italy, Egypt, and Syria. What an adventurous race 
you are, you Americans ! Here the women go merely * from the 
blue bed to the brown,' and think that they have travelled and seen 
the world. I myself should not care much to be confined, to a circle 
reaching six or seven miles round London. There are the fresh 
winds and wild thyme on Hampstead Heath, and from Rich- 
mond you may survey the Naiades. Highgate, where Coleridge 
lived, Enfield, where Charles Lamb dwelt, are not far off. Turning 
eastward, there is the river Lea, in which Izaak Walton fished ; 
and farther on — ha ! what do I see ? What are those little fish 
frisking in the batter (the great Naval Hospital close by), which 
fixed the affections of the enamored American while he resided in 
London, and have been floating in his dreams ever since ? They 
are said by the naturalists to be of the species Blandamentum album, 
and are by vulgar aldermen spoken carelessly of as white-bait. 

" London is full of carriages, full of strangers, full of parties feast- 
ing on strawberries and ices and other things intended to allay the 
heat of summer ; but the Summer herself (fickle virgin) keeps back, 
or has been stopped somewhere or other, — perhaps at the Liverpool 
custom-house, where the very brains of men (their books) are held 
in durance, as I know to my cost. 

" Thackeray is about to publish a new work in numbers, — a 
serial, as the newspapers call it. Thomas Carlyle is publishing (a 
sixpenny matter) in favor of the slave-trade. Novelists of all shades 
are plying their trades. Husbands are killing their wives in 
every day's newspaper. Burglars are peaching against each other ; 
there is no longer honor among thieves. I am starting for Leicester 
on a week's expedition amidst the mad people ; and the Emperor of 
Russia has crossed the Pruth, and intends to make a tour of Turkey. 

" All this appears to me little better than idle, restless vanity, 
my friend, what a fuss and a pother we are all making, we little flies 
who are going round on the great wheel of time ! To-day we are 
flickering and buzzing about, our little bits of wings glittering in the 
sunshine, and to-morrow we are safe enough in the little crevice at 
the back of the fireplace, or hid in the folds of the old curtain, shut 
up, stiff and torpid, for the long winter. What do you say to that 
profound reflection ? 

" I struggle against the lassitude which besets me, and strive in 
vain to be either sensible or jocose. I had better say farewell." 
18 



410 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

On Christmas day, 1854, he writes in rather flagging 
spirits, induced by ill health : — 

" I have owed you a letter for these many months, my good friend. 
I am afraid to think how long, lest the interest on the debt should 
have exceeded the capital, and be beyond my power to pay. 

" You must be good-natured and excuse me, for I have been ill — 
very frequently — and dispirited. A bodily complaint torments 
me, that has tormented me for the last two years. I no longer look 
at the world through a rose-colored glass. The prospect, I am 
sorry to say, is gray, grim, dull, barren, full of withered leaves, 
without flowers, or if there be any, all of them trampled down, 
soiled, discolored, and without fragrance. You see what a bit of half- 
smoked glass I am looking through. At all events, you must see how 
entirely I am disabled from returning, except in sober sentences, the 
lively and good-natured letters and other things which you have sent 
me from America. They were welcome, and I thank you for them 
now, in a few words, as you observe, but sincerely. I am somewhat 
brief, even in my gratitude. Had I been in braver spirits, I might 
have spurred my poor Pegasus, and sent you some lines on the 
Alma, or the Inkerman, — bloody battles, but exhibiting marks not 
to be mistaken of the old English heroism, which, after all is said 
about the enervating effects of luxury, is as grand and manifest as 
in the ancient fights which English history talks of so much. Even 
you, sternest of republicans, will, I think, be proud of the indomi- 
table courage of Englishmen, and gladly refer to your old paternity, 
I, at least, should be proud of Americans fighting after the same 
fashion (and -svathout doubt they would fight thus), just as old peo- 
ple exult in the brave conduct of their runaway sons. I cannot 
read of these later battles Avithout the tears coming into my eyes. 
It is said by ' our correspondent ' at New York that the folks there 
rejoice in the losses and disasters of the allies. This can never be 
the case, surely 1 No one whose opinion is worth a rap can rejoice 
at any success of the Czar, whose double-dealing and unscrupulous 
greediness must have rendered him an object of loathing to every 
well-thinking man. But what have I to do with politics, or you ? 
Our 'pleasant object and serene employ' are books, books. Let us 
return to pacific thoughts. 

" What a number of things have happened since I saw you I I 
looked for you in the last spring, little dreaming that so fat and 
flourishing a ' Statesman ' could be overthrown by a little fever. I 
had even begun some doggerel, announcing to you the advent of tha 



*' BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 4" 

white-bait, which I imagined were likely to be all eaten up in your 
absence. My memory is so bad that I cannot recollect half a dozen 
lines, probably not one, as it originally stood. 

" I was at Liverpool last June. After two or three attempts I 
contrived to seize on the famous Nathaniel Hawthorne. Need I 
say that I like him very much 1 He is very sensible, very genial, — 
a little shy, I think (for an American !) — and altogether extremely 
agreeable. I wish that I could see more of him, but our orbits are 
wide apart. Now and then — once in two years — I diverge into 
and cross his circle, but at other times we are separated by a space 
amounting to 210 miles. He has three childi-en, and a nice little 
wife, who has good-humor engraved on her countenance. 

" As to verse — yes, I have begun a dozen trifling things, which 
are in my drawer unfinished ; poor rags with ink upon them, none 
of them, I am afraid, properly labelled for posterity. I was for six 
weeks at Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, this year, but so unwell that I 
could not write a line, scarcely read one ; sitting out in the sun, 
eating, drinking, sleeping, and sometimes (poor soul !) imagining I 
was thinking. One Sunday I saw a magnificent steamer go by, and 
on placing my eye to the telescope I saw some Stars and Stripes 
(streaming from the mast-head) that carried me away to Boston, 
By the way, when will you finish the bridge ? 

" I hear strange hints of you all quarrelling about the slave ques- 
tion. Is it so 1 You are so happy and prosperous in America that 
you must be on the lookout for clouds, surely ! "When you see 
Emerson, Longfellow, Sumner, any one I know, pray bespeak for 
me a kind thought or word from them." 

Procter was always on the lookout for Hawthorne, 
whom he greatly admired. In November, 1855, he says, 
in a brief letter : — 

" I have not seen Hawthorne since I wrote to you. He came to 
London this summer, but, I am sorry to say, did not inquire for me. 
As it turned out, I was absent from town, but sent him (by Mrs. 
Russell Sturgis) a letter of introduction to Leigh Hunt, who was 
very much pleased with him. Poor Hunt ! he is the most genial 
of men ; and, now that his wife is confined to her bed by rheuma- 
tism, is recovering himself, and, I hope, doing well. He asked to 
come and see me the other day. I willingly assented, and when I 
saw him — grown old and sad and broken down in health — all my 
ancient liking for him revived. 



412 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

" You ask me to send you some verse. I accordingly send you a 
scrap of recent manufacture, and you will observe that instead of 
forwarding my epic on Sevastopol, I select something that is fitter 
for these present vernal love days than the bluster of heroic verse : — 

" SONG. 

" "Within the chambers of her breast 
Love lives and makes his spicy nest,"" 
Midst downy blooms and fragrant flowers, 
And there he dreams away the hours — 

There let him rest ! 
Some time hence, when the cuckoo sings, 
I '11 come by night and bind his wings, — 
Bind him that he shall not roam 
From his warm white virgin home. 

" Maiden of the summer season. 

Angel of the rosy time, 
Come, unless some graver reason 

Bid thee scorn my rh)rme ; 
Come from thy serener height, 
On a golden cloud descending, 
Come ere Love hath taken flight, 
And let thy stay be like the light, 
When its glory hath no ending 

In the Northern night ! " 

Now and then we get a glimpse of Thackeray in his 
letters. In one of them he says : — 

" Thackeray came a few days ago and read one of his lectures at 
our house (that on George the Third), and we asked about a dozen 
persons to come and hear it, among the rest, your handsome coun- 
trywoman, Mrs. R S . It was very pleasant, with that 

agreeable intermixture of tragedy and comedy that tells so well 
when judiciously managed. He will not print them for some time 
to come, intending to read them at some of the principal places in 
England, and perhaps Scotland. 

" What are you doing in America ? You are too happy and inde- 
pendent ! ' fortunatos Agricolas, sua si bona norint ! ' I am not 
quite sure of my Latin (which is rusty from old age), but I am sure 
of the sentiment, which is that when people are too happy, they 
don't know it, and so take to quarrelling to relieve the monotony 



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''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 413 

of their blue sky. Some of these days you will split your great 
kingdom in two, I suppose, and then — 

" My wife's mother, Mrs. Basil Montagu, is very ill, and we are 
apprehensive of a fatal result, which, in truth, the mere fact of her 
age (eighty-two or eighty-three) is enough to warrant. Ah, this 
terrible age ! The young people, I dare say, think that we live too 
long. Yet how short it is to look back on life ! Why, I saw the 
house the other day where I used to play with a wooden sword 
when I was five years old ! It camiot surely be eighty years ago ! 
What has occurred since 1 Why, nothing that is worth putting 
down on paper. A few nonsense verses, a flogging or two (richly 
deserved), and a few white-bait dinners, and the whole is reckoned 
up. Let us begin again." [Here he makes some big letters in a 
school-boy hand, which have a very pathetic look on the page.] 

In a letter written in 1856 lie gives me a graphic pic- 
ture of sad times in India : — 

" All our anxiety here at present is the Indian mutiny. We our- 
selves have great cause for trouble. Our son (the only son I have, 
indeed) escaped from Delhi lately. He is now at Meerut. He and 
four or five other officers, four women, and a child escaped. The 
men were obliged to drop the women a fearful height from the walls 
of the fort, amidst showers of bullets. A round shot passed within 
a yard of my son, and one of the ladies had a bullet through her 
shoulder. They were seven days and seven nights in the jungle, 
without money or meat, scarcely any clothes, no shoes. They forded 
rivers, lay on the wet ground at night, lapped water from the pud- 
dles, and finally reached Meerut. The lady (the mother of the three 
other ladies) had not her wound dressed, or seen, indeed, for upward 
of a week. Their feet were full of thorns. My son had nothing 
but a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a flannel waistcoat. How they 
contrived to live I don't know ; I suppose from small gifts of rice, 
etc., from the natives. 

" When I find any little thing now that disturbs my serenity, and 
which I might in former times have magnified into an evil, I think 
of what Europeans sufi'er from the vengeance of the Indians, and 
pass it by in quiet. 

" I received Mr. Hillard's epitaph on my dear kind friend Ken- 
yon. Thank him in my name for it. There are some copies to be 
reserved of a lithograph now in progress (a portrait of Kenyon) for 
his American friends. Should it be completed in time, Mr. Sum- 



414 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

ner will be asked to take them over. I have put down your name 
for one of those who would wish to have this little memento of a 

good kind man 

" I shall never visit America, be assured, or the continent of Eu- 
rope, or any distant region. I have reached nearly to the length of 
my tether. I have grown old and apathetic and stupid. All I care 
for, in the way of personal enjoyment, is quiet, ease, — to have 
nothing to do, nothing to think of. My only glance is backward. 
There is so little before me that I would rather not look that way." 

In a later letter he again speaks of his son and the war 
in India : — 

" My son is not in the list of killed and wounded, thank God ! 
He was before Delhi, having volunteered thither after his escape. 
We trust that he is at present safe, but every mail is pregnant with 
bloody tidings, and we do not find ourselves yet in a position to 
rejoice securely. What a terrible war this Indian war is ! Are all 
people of black blood cruel, cowardly, and treacherous ] If it were 
a case of gi-eat oppression on our part, I could understand and (al- 
most) excuse it ; but it is from the spoiled portion of the Hindos- 
tanees that the revengeful mutiny has arisen. One thing is quite 
clear, that whatever luxury and refinement have done for our race 
(for I include Americans with English), they have not diminished 
the courage and endurance and heroism for which I think we have 
formerly been famous. We are the same Saxons still. There has 
never been fiercer fighting than in some of the battles that have 
lately taken place in India. When I look back on the old history 
books, and see that all history consists of little else than the bloody 
feuds of nation with nation, I almost wonder that God has not ex- 
tinguished the cruel, selfish animals that we dignify with the name 
of men. No — I cry forgiveness : let the women live, if they can, 
without the men. I used the word ' men ' only." 

Here is a pleasant paragraph about "Aurora Leigh": — 

" The most successful book of the season has been Mrs. Brown- 
ing's ' Aurora Leigh.' I could wish some things altered, I confess ; 
but as it is, it is by far (a hundred times over) the finest poem ever 
written by a woman. We know little or nothing of Sappho, — 
nothing to induce comparison, — and all other wearers of petticoats 
must courtesy to the ground." 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 415 

In several of his last letters to me there are frequent 
allusions to our civil war. Here is an extract from an 
epistle written in 1861 : — 

" We read with painful attention the accounts of your great quar- 
rel in America. We know nothing beyond what we are told by the 
New York papers, and these are the stories of one of the combatants. 
I am afraid that, however you may mend the schism, you will never 
be so strong again. I hope, however, that something may arise to 
terminate the bloodshed ; for, after all, fighting is an unsatisfactory 
way of coming at the truth. If you were to stand up at once (and 
finally) against the slave-trade, your band of soldiers would have a 
more decided principle to fight for. But — 

" — But I really know little or nothing. I hope that at Boston 
you are comparatively peaceful, and I know that you are more abo- 
litionist than in the more southern countries. 

" There is nothing new doing here in the way of books. The last 
book I have seen is called ' Tannhauser,' published by Chapman 
and Hall, — a poem under feigned names, but really written by 
Robert Lytton and Julian Fane. It is not good enough for the 
first, but (as I conjecture) too good for the last. The songs which 
decide the contest of the bards are the worst portions of the book. 

" I read some time ago a novel which has not made much noise, 
but which is prodigiously clever, — ' City and Suburb.' The story 
hangs in parts, but it is full of weighty sentences. We have no poet 
since Tennyson except Robert Lytton, who, you know, calls him- 
self Owen Meredith, Poetry in England is assuming a new charac- 
ter, and not a better character. It has a sort of pre-Raphaelite ten- 
dency which does not suit my aged feelings. I am for Love, or the 
World well lost. But I forget that, if I live beyond the 21st of next 
November, I shall be seventy-four years of age. I have been obliged 
to resign my Commissionership of Lunacy, not being able to bear 
the pain of travelling. By this I lose about £ 900 a year. I am, 
therefore, sufficiently poor, even for a poet. Browning, as you 
know, has lost his wife. He is coming with his little boy to live in 
England. I rejoice at this, for I think that the English should live 
in England, especially in their youth, when people learn things that 
they never forget afterward." 

Near the close of 1864 he writes : — 

" Since I last heard from you, nothing except what is melancholy 



4i6 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

seems to have taken place. You seem all busy killing each other 
in America. Some friends of yours and several friends of mine 
have died. Among the last I cannot help placing Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne, for whom I had a sincere regard He was about your 

best prose writer, I think, and intermingled with his humor was a 
great deal of tenderness. To die so soon ! 

" You are so easily affronted in America, if we (English) say any- 
thing about putting an end to your war, that I will not venture to 
hint at the subject. Nevertheless, I wish that you were all at peace 
again, for your own sakes and for the sake of human nature. I 
detest fighting now, although I was a great admirer of fighting in 
my youth. My youth ? I wonder where it has gone. It has left 
me with gray hairs and rheumatism, and plenty of (too many other) 
infirmities. I stagger and stumble along, with almost seventy-six 
years on my head, upon failing limbs, which no longer enable me 
to walk half a mile. I see a great deal, all behind me (the Past), 
but the prospect before me is not cheerful. Sometimes I wish that 
I had tried harder for what is called Fame, but generally (as now) 
I care very little about it. After all, — unless one could be Shake- 
speare, which (clearly) is not an easy matter, — of what A'alue is a 
little puff of smoke from a review ? If we could settle permanently 
who is to be the Homer or Shakespeare of our time, it might be 

worth something ; but we cannot. Is it Jones, or Smith, or 1 

Alas ! I get short-sighted on this point, and cannot penetrate the 
impenetrable dark. IVIake my remembrances acceptable to Long- 
fellow, to Lowell, to Emerson, and to any one else who remembers 
me. Yours, ever sincerely, 

" B. W. Procter." 

And here are a few paragraphs from the last letter I 
ever received in Procter's loving hand : — 

" Although I date this from Weymouth Street, yet I am writing 
140 or 150 miles away from London. Perhaps this temporary re- 
treat from our great, noisy, turbulent city reminds me that I have 
been very unmindful of your letter, received long ago. But I have 
been busy, and my writing now is not a simple matter, as it was 
fifty years ago. I have great difficulty in forming the letters, and 
you would be surprised to learn with what labor this task is per- 
formed. Then I have been incessantly occupied in writing (I refer 
to the mechanical part only) the ' Memoir of Charles Lamb.' It is 
not my book, — i. e. not my property, — but one which I was hired 




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»BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 417 

to •write, and it forms my last earnings. You will have heard of 
the book (perhaps seen it) some time since. It has been very well 
received. I would not have engaged myself on anything else, but 
I had great regard for Charles Lamb, and so (somehow or other) I 
have contrived to reach the end. 

" I have already (long ago) written something about Hazlitt, but I 
have received more than one application for it, in case I can manage 
to complete my essay. As in the case of Lamb, I am really the only 
person living who knew much about his daily life. I have not, 
however, quite the same incentive to carry me on. Indeed, I am not 
certain that I should be able to travel to the real Finis. 

" My wife is very grateful for the copies of my dear Adelaide's, 
poems which you sent her. She appears surprised to hear that I 
have not transmitted her thanks to you before. 

" We get the ' Atlantic Monthly ' regularly. I need not tell you 
how much better the poetry is than at its commencement. Very 
good is * Released,' ia the July number, and several of the stories j 
but they are in London, and I cannot particularize them. 

"'We were very much pleased with Colonel Holmes, the son of 
your friend and contributor. He seems a very intelligent, modest 
young man ; as Little military as need be, and, like Coriolanus, not 
baring his wounds (if he has any) for public gaze. When you 
see Dr. Holmes, pray tell him how much I and my wife liked 
his son. 

"We are at the present moment rusticating at Malvern Wells. 
We are on the side of a great hUl (which you would call small in 
America), and our intercourse is only with the flowers and bees and 
swallows of the season. Sometimes we encounter a wasp, which I 
suppose comes from over seas ! 

" The Storys are living two or three miles off, and called upon us 
a few days ago. You have not seen Ms Sibyl, which I think very 
fine, and as containing a very great future. But the young poets 
generally disappoint us, and are too content with startling us into 
admiration of their first works, and then go to sleep. 

" I wish that I had, when younger, made more notes about my con- 
temporaries ; for, being of no faction in politics, it happens that I 
have known far more literary men than any other person of my time. 
In counting up the names of persons known to me who were, in 
some way or other, connected with literature, I reckoned up more 
than one himdred. But then I have had more than sixty years to 
do this in. My first acquaintance of this sort was Bowles, the poet. 
This was about 1805. 

18* A A 



4i8 YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. 

" Although I can scarcely write, I am able to say, in conclusion, 
that I am 

" Very sincerely yours, 

"B. W. Procter. 



Procter was an ardent student of the works of our older 
English dramatists, and he had a special fondness for such 
writers as Decker, Marlowe, Heywood, Webster, and 
Fletcher. Many of his own dramatic scenes are modelled 
on that passionate and romantic school. He had great 
relish for a good modern novel, too ; and I recall the titles 
of several which he recommended warmly for my perusal 
and republication in America. When I first came to know 
him, the duties of his office as a Commissioner obliged him 
to travel about the kingdom, sometimes on long journeys, 
and he told me his pocket companion was a cheap reprint 
of Emerson's "Essays," which he found such agreeable 
reading that he never left home without it. Longfellow's 
" Hyperion " was another of his favorite books during the 
years he was on duty. 

Among the last agreeable visits I made to the old poet 
was one with reference to a proposition of his own to omit 
several songs and other short poems from a new issue of 
his works then in press. I stoutly opposed the ignoring 
of certain old favorites of mine, and the poet's wife joined 
with me in deciding against the author in his proposal to 
cast aside so many beautiful songs, — songs as well worth 
saving as any in the volume. Procter argued that, being 
past seventy, he had now reached to years of discretion, 
and that his judgment ought to be followed without a 
murmur. I held out firm to the end of our discussion, 
and we settled the matter with this compromise : he was 
to expunge whatever he chose from the English edition, 
but I was to have my own way with the American one. 
So to this day the American reprint is the only complete 



''BARRY CORNWALL" AND HIS FRIENDS. 419 

collection of Barry Cornwall's earliest pieces, for I held 
on to all the old lyrics, without discarding a single line. 

The poet's figure was short and fuU, and his voice had a 
low, veiled tone habitually in it, which made it sometimes 
difficult to hear distinctly what he was saying. When in 
conversation, he liked to be very near his listener, and 
thus stand, as it were, on confidential ground with him. 
His turn of thought was cheerful among his friends, and 
he proceeded readily into a vein of wit and nimble ex- 
pression. Verbal felicity seemed natural to him, and his 
epithets, evidently unprepared, were always perfect. He 
disliked cant and hard ways of judging character. He 
praised easily. He had no wish to stand in anybody's 
shoes but his own, and he said, " There is no literary vice 
of a darker shade than envy." Talleyrand's recipe fur 
perfect happiness was the opposite to his. He impressed 
every one who came near him as a born gentleman, chival- 
rous and generous in a marked degree, and it was the 
habit of those who knew him to have an affection for him. 
Altering a line of Pope, this counsel might have been safely 
tendered to all the authors of his day, — 

*' Disdain whatever Procter's mind disdains." 



PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON & CO. 

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

U.S.A. 



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